Nov. 27, 2016 Thanks Be To God by Pastor Josh Sheldon

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Nov. 27, 2016 Thanks Be To God Psalm 136 Pastor Josh Sheldon

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And of all the occasions that we celebrate, most of us celebrate anyway, all the occasions that the
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Bible neither forbids nor commands us, Thanksgiving is my favorite. Now, many of you know
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I'm sort of a turkey fanatic, and maybe you know that because I tell it so often, I just love turkey.
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So any occasion that features turkey is going to be one that I'm going to enjoy, at least in the physical sense.
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But Thanksgiving is a very special time of year, a time we set aside to particularly give thanks, and despite the efforts of many to secularize
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Thanksgiving, to try and prove to us that in the past, when it was first come about, that it was a holiday that did not have a religious, if you will, foundation.
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And I don't want to digress into a polemic this morning, and this morning's message is not an exegetical or expositional message so much as you've been accustomed to.
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You can see already I'm going to take this one Sunday break from our series of going through Romans.
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Right now we should be in chapter 2, verses 12 to 29, if you want to read ahead, get ready for that when I come back on the 11th of next month.
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This morning's message is more of a meditation, more of a devotional sort of message, more of a remembering why we have cause to give thanks to God, as did the pilgrims who first sat down at Thanksgiving, as did
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Abraham Lincoln, who seems to be the first one to have codified Thanksgiving as a national holiday.
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I read some time ago Nathaniel Philbrick's history of the pilgrims, it's called
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Mayflower, Story of Courage, Community, and War. If you like history, it's a very, very good book.
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He's a fine historian, he's a good author, and he's completely secular, and yet if you read his history of the pilgrims, which he researched very carefully, and he's a very well regarded historian and scholar, there's no doubt that they stopped to give thanksgiving to God, these pilgrims with a reformed
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Puritan foundation, much like ours. So I want this morning for us to just take time for Thanksgiving, to remember that we serve a
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God who is worthy of our praise, and we should always be in a mode, in an attitude of gratitude towards Him.
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I want to read just a short couple of paragraphs from Abraham Lincoln's proclamation for us, and then we will dig in pretty quickly after this.
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He said, No human counsel has devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things.
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The great things he means is during the Civil War, that during that time, law and orderliness was actually maintained.
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And during the time when the military resources were stretched so thin, they were still able to defend themselves well enough that foreign powers did not come and take advantage of a perceived weakness.
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Those are the things he's talking about, these great things. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things.
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They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
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One more paragraph. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole
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American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last
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Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our Beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.
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So as we take this morning's service, and I set it aside in, as I said, a more devotional, sort of a meditative way, remembering the
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God who is worthy of all thanks. The God to whom thanks are always appropriate, in whatever circumstance we find ourselves.
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I think this is a good way to begin. We just had Thanksgiving, and as I said before, we had fellowship, and with family, with friends, with loved ones, we had tables full of food, and it's a good time, even though the holiday has passed, and perhaps we should have done it before.
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As I said, we're neither commanded nor forbidden from this, so this morning, we're going to especially take time to remember thanks to God.
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Scripture will be our guide, though. Lord willing, I'm not just going to ramble out and tell you all these reasons to give thanks to God that come to my head.
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Scripture is always our God, and I want to use Psalm 136 as our core, as our starting point.
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So if you want to turn there to Psalm 136, and you'll find there 26 verses.
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It begins with, give thanks to the Lord, and then the rest of it tells us why.
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This is not an exhaustive list of the reasons God is worthy to hear our thanks and our gratitude, but it's a good starting point.
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26 verses, each verse saying something about our Lord, which in each case is followed by a refrain, for His mercy endures forever.
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Now if you open your pew Bible, that's an ESV, that's the English Standard Version, and it does not say for His mercy endures forever, it says for His steadfast love endures forever.
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Now steadfast love, as a translation of the word in the original Hebrew, which is chesed, is a good technical translation.
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I still like the New King James or the King James, that's the one that got in my head, it's His mercy endures forever.
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And so that's the way I will read it. We can make this one exception after each. And one other thing before I read the psalm, is to tell you that this was a communal psalm.
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This was a psalm of corporate worship. Now, I don't often ask for responsive readings.
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I'm not one of these preachers who puts his hand up to his ear and is calling for an amen or anything like that from you.
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We don't do that often here as a matter of style. I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with it. And we don't do responsive anything here very often.
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You can sit there normally in a very passive sense and be comfortable that nobody's going to put anybody on the spot.
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But I want to make an exception this morning. Because after each half line, we have this refrain,
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His mercy endures forever. And that is actually the assembly's part. To say
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His mercy endures forever. So we say something about God, what God has done. And the response is, for His mercy endures forever.
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And I would ask you to do that. I would ask for this one exception to our usual pattern of not asking for any response.
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For you to bear with me. And after I read that first half of each line, you respond with me.
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For His mercy endures forever. And work with me this morning.
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You won't have to worry about it for at least another year. We don't do this often. So it is an exception.
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And Lord willing, we'll keep it that way. So Psalm 136. We'll start out with giving thanks to the
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Lord. And then a whole list of reasons. Give thanks to the
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Lord, for He is good. For His mercy endures forever. Give thanks to the
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God of gods for His steadfast love. I'm sorry. I thought
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I was so ready for that. We're not used to doing this, are we? Give thanks to the Lord of lords, for His mercy endures forever.
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Thank you. To Him who alone does great wonders, for His mercy endures forever.
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To Him who by understanding made the heavens, for His mercy endures forever.
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To Him who spread out the earth above the waters, for His steadfastness endures forever.
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To Him who made the great lights, for His mercy endures forever. The sun to rule the day, for His mercy endures forever.
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The sun and stars to rule over the night, for His mercy endures forever.
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To Him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt, for His mercy endures forever.
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And brought Israel out from among them, for His mercy endures forever. With a strong hand and an outstretched arm, for His mercy endures forever.
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To Him who divided the Red Sea in two, for His mercy endures forever. And made
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Israel pass through the midst of it, for His mercy endures forever. But overthrew
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Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea, for His mercy endures forever.
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To Him who led His people through the wilderness, for His mercy endures forever.
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To Him who struck down great kings, for His mercy endures forever.
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And killed mighty kings, for His mercy endures forever. Sihon, king of the
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Amorites, for His mercy endures forever. And Og, king of Bashan, for His mercy endures forever.
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And gave their land as a heritage, for His mercy endures forever. A heritage to Israel His servant, for His mercy endures forever.
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It is He who remembered us in our lowest state, for His mercy endures forever. And rescued us from our foes, for His mercy endures forever.
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He who gives food to all flesh, for His mercy endures forever. Give thanks to the
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God of heaven, for His mercy endures forever. Thank you for participating with me in that.
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The word for to give thanks, give thanks to the God of gods, give thanks to the
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Lord, give thanks to the Lord of lords, give thanks to Him. This word thanks derives from a root word, which means to actually cast or to throw something, it seems.
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And in ancient times, there might have been some sort of an action involved in calling out their thanks to Him.
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And I don't know how to portray that to you. That's just the definition you get by going through the lexicons. That it had this idea that there was, there's something that people did when they said it, where they would cast or throw or toss their praises at God, their thanksgiving to Him.
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It reminds me of Revelation 4 and verses 10 and 11, where the elders cast their crowns before the throne saying, worthy are you, our
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Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created, throwing our gratitude to God as we bow down before Him.
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And the Greek translation of the original Hebrew for this word give thanks uses the word hallelujah.
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Hallelujah to God. Hallelujah to the Lord of lords, to the God of gods, who has done all these wonderful things.
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The first three verses, you may have noticed, highlight God's name. They highlight
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God's name. Verse one is give thanks to Yahweh. Verse two, give thanks to the God of gods, which is to say the
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Elohim of all Elohims. Verse three, give thanks to the
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Lord of lords, which is the Adonai of all Adonais. So these three major names of God, the ones where we get all the constructs, as we call them, like Yahweh, the
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Lord of hosts, the military, the martial God who rescues His people.
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Yahweh is in the first verse, the self -sufficient one, the one whose life, whose existence, whose person is in Himself, who depends on no one, depends on nothing for what
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He is and for His very being. And then verse two, Elohim.
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Well, Elohim is the word, the name of God that we get in the very first chapter of the Bible. In the beginning,
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God, Elohim, created the heavens and earth. So give thanks to the
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God of gods for His steadfast love, for His mercy endures forever. Verse three, the Lord of lords, that's
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Adonai, master, the sovereign, the ultimate authority. That's in the first three verses, giving thanks to God.
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Yahweh, Elohim, Adonai. Yahweh, I am who
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I am, self -existent, eternal. Elohim, the God of creation,
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Adonai, absolute ruler and master, that's who we're giving thanks to.
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Verses four to nine sort of follow this pattern. They enjoin our thanks to Him as creator, to Him who by understanding made the heavens, that's creation, who spread out the earth above the waters, creation.
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All these verses, look at verse nine, that's the end of that little section. The moon and stars to rule over the night, that's all
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Genesis one, creation. Give thanks to Elohim simply for His creation.
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Give thanks to God that we are not the product of time and chance. Give thanks to God that we and all else that exists is the result of His intentional will because Elohim created all things.
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And therefore we, as well as this terrestrial ball upon which we stand, as well as the lights in heaven that rule the day and the night, that keep the gravitational poles correct so we have the right aspect to the sun so that the tides work to our benefit, all these things didn't just happen.
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Elohim willed them to be. If secularists, if scientists are correct, we have no cause to give thanks.
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It's just time and chance. It's just good luck that we happen to be here, which of course we know as we take this one day aside to remember to give thanks especially to God for who and what
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He is. This is not time and chance. It's not just good luck. We don't believe in luck. We believe in a sovereign
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God who intentionally does what He does. Verse six speaks of how the waters were over the whole earth.
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That's back to Genesis 1 -9. God, Elohim, God said, let the waters under the heavens be gathered to one place and let the dry land appear and it was so.
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Didn't just happen. God said it and it was so. Give thanks to that God.
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And the rest of creation is there in verses six through nine where He focuses, our author focuses with Psalms eight and Psalm eight and 19 on the heavens and how
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God by His word placed lights in the sky. If you notice that in those verses,
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He speaks of God made everything. He made the heavens, verse five. He spread out the earth above the waters when
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He told the waters to recede, the mountains to come up. That's verse six. And seven, eight, and nine all have to do with the heavens.
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All have to do with the lights that God put in the heavens. The great lights, verse seven. The sun to rule over the day, verse eight.
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The moon and stars to rule over the night, verse nine. Obviously, all bringing us back to Genesis 1 and the primordial creation.
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Why then did God do all this? All this is a demonstration of the same thing repeated over and over in our
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Psalm. It's because of His mercy. We can look here, we can say, why did God create?
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Why did God send the waters away? Why did God raise up the mountains? Why did God give us a sun, a moon, stars?
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And of course, the allusion there is to all that God created. So we could say also, the creatures in the sea that feed us.
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Crops in the earth that again, feed us. Animals, trees, fruit, vegetables, all these things.
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Why did God do this when He created? Because of His mercy. His ever enduring, eternal mercy.
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Now we know life is not always easy. God and His providence, God and His wisdom does give us some things that are hugely difficult.
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Relationships, health, all sorts of trials come. But through it all, we can say it is because of His mercy that we are even here to go through the things that we go through.
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Paul prayed three times for a thorn to be removed, some affliction that we don't know exactly what it was, but we know it caused him grief.
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We know it was a hard trial. Christ answered back to him, my grace is sufficient for my power is made perfect in your weakness.
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So why does He allow us trouble? Because of His mercy. His grace has made all the more wondrous as His unlimited power is perfected or shown to be perfect is a better way to say it when we confess ourselves to be weak.
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We confess our need to God, to Jesus, and sometimes He leaves us weak, doesn't
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He? He doesn't always cure us. He doesn't always give us the strength that we think we need.
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And yet that is because of His mercy which endures forever. Because by His mercy, we become vehicles by which
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His grace is seen. That's His mercy. That's why
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He made everything, because of His mercy. Verses 10 through 14 speak of God's redemption of His people.
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So it moves very quickly through history, doesn't it? Where we have creation and all of a sudden, there we are in Egypt.
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And we know that that's the Exodus. This is Exodus chapters three through about chapter 12 where Moses is called and sent to Pharaoh and warns
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Pharaoh to release the children of Israel. We know this story very well. There's a whole lot of history that the psalm leaves out or at least doesn't give us in detail.
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But I do believe it was supposed to be, we were supposed to have it in our minds. But verses 10 to 14, let's go with the flow of the psalm as we think of giving thanks to God.
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Redemption. God didn't make us to sin, but He made us knowing we would because of His mercy,
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His steadfast love. He redeemed His people from all that blocked them, that blocks us from being able to dwell with Him.
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If we think of what might be between creation and redemption in the psalm, what's in between those two?
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I would argue Genesis three. Sin and the need for redemption becoming manifest on earth.
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And so God in His mercy, having again, let me say it again. He didn't make us to sin, but He knew we would sin.
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And knowing we would sin, the plan of redemption was always on His mind because of His mercy, which is eternal, ever living, loving mercy.
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So verses 10 to 14 speak of this exodus, this redemption, this prototype of the redemption that we have from Jesus Christ on the cross.
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Because of His mercy, His steadfast love, He redeemed His people from all that kept us from Him.
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Now these verses pick up the exodus saga from the 10th plague to the Red Sea crossing.
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Do you see where it started? To Him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt. So obviously that has to bring our thoughts back to the first nine plagues because the firstborn of Egypt and their death is the 10th, the final plague, the one where Pharaoh finally had enough and released
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God's people. Exodus chapter two, verse 24 to 25 say that God heard
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Israel's groaning and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel and God knew.
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This sovereign God, this Elohim who made everything, this Yahweh, this self -sufficient one,
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Adonai, master, ruler, He saw the misery of His people.
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He Himself remembered His covenant. And here is where ESV's steadfast love actually works a little bit better than mercy because steadfast love has more the content of God remembering and being faithful to His own spoken word,
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His own covenant. He had told Abraham He would rescue His people after 430 years.
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He had made this covenant. He had obligated Himself to bringing the people out of Egypt, to redeeming them from the slavery, to bringing them to the land of promise where they would have freedom, a land flowing with milk and honey.
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God remembered and God, because He's a merciful God, because He's a faithful God, because He's reliable, because it is impossible for God to lie.
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God remembered and God acted. You see, His covenant with Abraham, no mere formality, it was the word of the eternally merciful
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God who always keeps His word. You know, when the church remembers the exodus, we go forward very quickly, don't we?
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To the Lord Jesus Christ. Because of all the redemptive acts of God in this flow of redemptive history from Genesis 1 to the end of the
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Bible in Revelation, exodus stands second only to the cross for this dramatic working of God, this intervention of God into the affairs of man, keeping
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His own word. And by that keeping of His word, disturbing even the natural physical laws in order to accomplish
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His word, that must take a seat behind the redemption that that can only point towards, that that was only prototypical of, which is the cross.
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He has redeemed His people from slavery, not to Egypt, but slavery to sin.
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We're freed not from Egyptians, but from the fear of death because of the cross, because of that ultimate exodus.
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When Israel's journey began with the death of the firstborn of Egypt, ours began with the death of God's only begotten son.
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When the angel of death went through Egypt, he looked for the sign of faith, for blood on the doorposts of the house.
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And when he saw that, what did he do? Then he passed over them. He moved on to find those who did not believe the promises of God.
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To find those who refused to put the signal of faith on their doorposts, the blood of the
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Lamb. And those houses suffered the death of all their firstborn.
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Well, with Jesus, you know, we have no actual blood, of course, but it wasn't really the blood that saved
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Israel back then. It was the faith that the blood signified. And while our
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Bible speaks of us being saved by the blood of Jesus, it means faith in what Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross.
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Cross, faith that his death was suffered on our behalf and it was full, it was sufficient to save us.
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Because if we're saved by the actual literal blood, then only a few people back then, 2 ,000 years ago, could possibly have been saved.
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The blood simply stands in for our faith in the death of Jesus Christ and what it accomplished.
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Faith that when Jesus said it is finished, that at that very moment, all God's wrath at our sin was exhausted, that Jesus paid it all.
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How much more must the church see in Exodus than did Israel? How much more must we see in that great saga than the people who actually then benefited from it?
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By his mercy, he brought them to the land of promise. Colossians 1, 13 to 14 speak of Jesus' cross this way.
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He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
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All that the Exodus from Egypt prefigured is completed in Jesus Christ, the one we worship here this day, the one we're giving our thanks to especially.
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And where is our deliverance to? If theirs was to land, ours is to heaven.
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If they, during their 40 years of wandering, had hope in going to the land of promise, we during whatever years
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God keeps us here, if we have our faith in Jesus Christ and that cross, that redemption he accomplished, we know we will be delivered as Israel was, but we'll be delivered where?
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To the very presence of God, to where Jesus now is. Our Exodus away from sin, our
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Exodus from slavery to sin, from this terrestrial ball to the throne of grace, how much more can we proclaim than Israel did for his mercy endures forever?
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And it goes on, because God didn't leave Israel any more than he does us to their own devices.
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What would they have done had he done so? Well, they would have turned around very quickly. Those leeks and onions, that savory food that they had as slaves, that comfortable knowing that each day they would be fed, well, so they could be worked and abused and all these other things, but they'd gotten comfortable with it.
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They would have turned around immediately, left on their own. Verses 15 and 20 speaks of how
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God defeated all their enemies along the way. More than just destroying opposing armies, though.
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God, not just, as it were, showing off that he was more powerful than they were. Deuteronomy chapter eight, verses three and four, tell us of God's constant, of his merciful care for them, not leaving them to their own devices.
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He humbled you, says Moses, and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the
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Lord. Your clothing did not wear out on you, and your foot did not swell these 40 years.
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God led them. God was always in the vanguard for them, as God leads us now by his spirit, by his word.
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And that's not a stretch. That's not a strained connection for us to make.
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As we look at them and their wilderness wanderings, and us now being led by Jesus Christ and his spirit,
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Paul makes it very clear to us in 1 Corinthians chapter 10 in the first four verses, I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was
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Christ. Who leads us today? The same,
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Christ. Christ their prefigured, Christ their pre -incarnate, yes, but not a different Jesus, not a different Christ, not a different leader.
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Oh, we follow him now by his indwelling spirit in us individually and us all as a body, as a church, but it's the same
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Christ, the same Lord, the same merciful God who leads us now just as he led us, led them then.
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Can we not say with Israel that his mercy is unending, unfailing in a word? Can we not say that God has shown that his mercy is eternal?
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Jesus promised us his spirit to remind us of his words. The spirit of God is within all who believe, the selfsame spirit who went ahead of Israel, and why?
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On this day, they were setting aside, especially here this morning, to just give thanks to God.
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Why did he do all this? Because his mercy endures forever.
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His mercy endures forever. That's why he did any of these things. The psalm reminds us that we're never without cause to give thanks to God.
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He made us, he made everything that exists. Just to be alive is because of his mercy.
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He has redeemed us by the blood of his son. He has led us by his word and his spirit. He has proved himself to be faithful to his word.
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In the Exodus, and again when he gave his only begotten son to die for our sins, that we might be redeemed from bondage, a bondage far worse, a bondage longer lasting, a bondage with greater consequences than anything
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Israel experienced. We were released from bondage to sin.
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We were released from that servitude to the kingdom of heaven.
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We have so much more reason than the ancients to cast upon God our thanks, our hallelujah choruses.
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I mean, small wonder that Paul commands the church to what? Give thanks in all circumstances.
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Wherever you are, whatever is happening, give thanks to God. Why in everything?
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Why in all? Because God is good. Because God has done only good for his people and will do only good for his people.
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Nowhere does he say it will be easy. Jesus says in this world you will have tribulations. It will be hard.
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If we follow Jesus Christ, he promises, as it were, that you will be persecuted because of your faith.
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Some persecutions are more, some persecutions are less dramatic than others. In all this, wherever we are, just because we can look at the hard times and say
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God be praised because my weakness is showing off his power, his grace, whether it's physical, relational, give thanks to God.
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Now, you often hear, and I actually agree with it, do we thank
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God that I've got some terrible disease, that I'm losing a spouse, that my job is going away, that I have to move to another part of the country and leave a church
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I love? No, we don't thank God because things are hard. We thank God because we know that he is the one leading us, that we know however hard, however difficult it seems to us here and now,
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God is going to work good through it. That's why we thank God. Not silly, like thank
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God I've got this terrible, painful malady. That'd be silly. Thank God that through this,
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Jesus Christ's power is made perfect. Thank God in all our circumstances.
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God does good, God only does good because God's mercy endures forever.
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Whatever's happening in our life, whether it's bounty or difficulty, whatever it is, whether it's finances, health, jobs, we always have cause to thank
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God simply because he is worthy of it. And we know that if he did all these things that the
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Psalm says he did because his mercy endures forever, then whatever we are going through, we can thank
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God because we know his mercy will never end. Paul said he himself was a blasphemer, an insolent man, a persecutor of the church, but God showed mercy to him.
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For the glory of God, not the glory of man. To God's credit, not Paul's, and no one teaches us that better than Paul himself does, but we do have this confidence that whatever circumstance we're in, wherever we are in our wanderings on this terrestrial ball, that God is showing us mercy because his mercy never ends.
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Psalm, or excuse me, Proverbs 30, verses eight and nine, I think this says a bit about this.
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It says, remove from me falsehood and lying, give me neither poverty nor riches, feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, who is the
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Lord? Or lest I be poor and still and profane, the name of my God. Whichever circumstance
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God has us in, be it poverty, be it riches, I think we keep ourselves from the bitterness that poverty can engender in us or the hubris that riches can bring by thanking
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God. And not thank God I'm rolling in the dough right now. Thank you, Lord, that I am able this day, give me this day our daily bread, give us this day our daily bread.
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Thank you, Father, that in your mercy, in your providence, today, I have enough.
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And if that for you, enough, is many times more than what is actually needed, the humility of thanking
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God is no different. And I think thanking God with a full heart is what keeps us from the pride that the proverb warns us against.
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Or for that matter, the bitterness that the other way, the poverty side might bring.
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And this could be as simple as remembering that anything we have is from God's generous hand.
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There's a short list of thanksgivings that Paul gives us that I wanna go through. Romans chapter six, verses 17 and 18.
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Thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed and having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
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Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you have his spirit dwelling within?
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Has he opened your eyes to the wonderful things of his word? Brought you to a fellowship that gives you fellowship with other believers, those who will edify you, encourage you, rebuke you when you have to?
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Do you know yourself to now become slaves to something better than what was before Jesus Christ grabbed hold?
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Thanks be to God. It's not something we did to ourselves. It's not something we yearned for.
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We wanted to be left in that old way. We were comfortable with it. Thanks be to God for changed hearts, for renewed spirits.
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Thanks be to God for his spirit. By whom we are converted to the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Thank him that by the redemption we have in Christ, we can be glad that we are slaves to his righteousness.
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In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verses 54 to 57, Paul sets our mind on Christ's ultimate victory, and here's a great cause for thanks.
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And wherever we find ourselves, when the perishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass that saying which is written, death is swallowed up in victory.
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Oh, death, where's your victory? Oh, death, where's your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
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But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. If the simple command to thank
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God because he is good isn't always enough to elicit from us a hallelujah, then this has to be.
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Because of Jesus' death on the cross where he won our salvation, we have a victory that Israel could only have dreamed of.
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An ultimate, a final, a victory that will stay with us forever and ever and ever.
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Victory even over death itself. The author of the
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Hebrews speaks of we who were trapped, as it were, by our fear of death.
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In Jesus Christ, death has died.
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It doesn't mean we won't die. And the only ones of us who won't, I would imagine, are those who are still alive when the
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Lord Jesus Christ returns. But ultimately, we can give thanks to God that through Jesus Christ and our faith in him, death has no more hold on us.
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Death has no more sting. It has no more victory. We don't laugh at it. I was at a conference once where I was a pastor.
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And I remember Pastor Baig was speaking, and he spoke, I think it was of Quakers, who at a funeral service would simply hold their hands together in front of them and look down for a long time without saying a word.
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No music, no words, and just look at the casket and ponder what an awful thing death is.
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How antithetical it is to all that God had in mind when he first created man on this earth.
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And yet, knowing how it was so different from God's original intent, understanding that because of Jesus Christ, knowing how horrible it is because it was not
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God's intention or will, we can still give thanks because we have complete victory over it.
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The ultimate fear of it, that that is the end, is no longer our problem.
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Because Jesus Christ's victory over death means that we will one day live with him. This is confirmed also by Paul.
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But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. He speaks of the resurrection. Can a moment go by in a
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Christian's life where we cannot stop and give thanks to God for the resurrection, which confirms all the promises of the
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Bible? He has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
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For as by a man came death, by a man also has come the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
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But each in his own order, Christ the firstfruits. Then it is coming, those who belong to Christ.
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I'd only hoped this morning to set our mind on some of the reasons we have to give thanks to God.
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In a Sunday, in a month of Sundays, as they say, we couldn't exhaust the reason to give thanks to God. The choruses that we read of in Revelation of the elders and the seraphim and the angels and the saints and the thousands upon thousands and 10 ,000s upon 10 ,000s, all calling out thanks and praise to God couldn't satisfy the thanks that he actually is worthy of.
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So this morning, is it just a pittance? I wouldn't denigrate it so far, insofar and as long as we have looked to the scripture and found scriptural causes to be thankful to God.
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So I hope that this morning, after we've had a wonderful Thanksgiving with friends and family and loved ones, as we start to anticipate the end of this busy holiday season and perhaps,
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Lord willing, soon, in less than two months, get back into the normal routine, the workaday world, remember that we have great cause to give thanks to God.
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A God who created us, a God who redeemed us, a God who leads us, a
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God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead, who we will one day follow, even as we follow him by his spirit in the here and now.
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Amen? As we take a few moments of quiet after the preaching, perhaps...