God Centered Thanksgiving

God Centered Theology

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Well, it was said that if the stars only came out once a year, for one, nighttime would be pretty dark.

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But if they only came out once a year, that everybody would stay up all night to behold them.

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Imagine this is true for a whole host of things. The reason the Super Bowl is so fun in such an event is because it only happens once a year.

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The more things happen, the more things occur, they naturally become a little bit more diluted in their importance.

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But the stars only came out once a year, we would certainly stay up all night to behold them.

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We've seen the stars so often, we don't even bother to look at them anymore.

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We have grown accustomed to the blessing of starlight.

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The Israelites in the wilderness, they got accustomed to certain blessings as well.

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God had to chasten his people. You see, he fed the nation with heavenly manna each morning.

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This is a lot of what Jesus himself is speaking about in John 6 when he talks about he is the bread of life which comes down from heaven, pointing back to the time in which

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God literally fed his people bread from heaven. And Jesus says, I am the true bread from heaven.

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But he fed this nation every morning and the people grew tired of this manna. He said, our whole being is dried up.

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There is nothing at all except this manna before our eyes. Nothing but manna, nothing but manna they would say.

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If you've ever been in a period of life where you've had to eat certain things consistently, in my house we say it, we're burnt out on something.

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I'm burnt out on eating that. I'm so still to this day burnt out on Kellogg's Pop Tarts, the thought of eating one just nauseates me.

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I ate so many for so many years and I just have no desire for them.

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It'll happen to you. Your taste buds change over time, but this wasn't a matter of their taste buds changing.

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This was a matter of discontentment and not being thankful for what God was providing for them.

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Nothing but manna. God created this whole universe, all these stars, all these planets, all this diversity and all we have is this stinking manna.

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So disgruntled, so unappreciative people. But are we so different than them really?

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One of these people, the Israelites, were experiencing a miracle of God's provision every single morning and yet they were no longer excited about it.

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This certainly happens to Christians, you know, they're very excited when they get saved and it seems like that joy just kind of tapers off and Paul reminds us throughout the whole book of Philippians that the

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Christian joy not only never ends, but should be increasing over time.

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And one of the evidences that we have grown accustomed to the miracles and blessing of God is that the spirit of criticism and complaining comes to mark our identity.

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Now I am not going to stand before you and be a hypocrite this evening and say, you little Christians out there, you better not complain or be critical.

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Well, I've been there and if I'm not careful,

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I can still be there now. I've been there, it's easy to see in comparison what

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I have versus what I think I should have. And then I become critical and I complain.

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I should have this kind of job. I should have this kind of food or possessions or whatever it is.

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I think, and I'm a fan of all that we have technology -wise, social media, websites, podcasts, blog articles.

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If it's tech -related, it's for me. But that does not mean we are blind to either downsides, either real or potential and one of the real downsides of social media is we fall into the trap of the comparative analysis.

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Because I would say probably 99 % of people on social media are going to show you a version of what they want you to see.

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I just got a new car. I just got a new job. Look how great my kids are. Look how great this is.

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I don't doubt that those things are true, but it's not the whole story. And so we see that and we think about whatever is in front of us and we naturally want to compare and contrast and thus complain and be critical.

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Instead of thanking God for what we have, we complain about it and tell Him we wish we had something else or something better.

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Because after all, we know better, right? Let me tell you something. You can be sure that if God gave you exactly what you asked for in your moment of self -centered pity, you would eventually complain about that, too.

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How do I know this? Because I've done it. And you start thinking, like, wait a minute, this is what

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I asked for and I got it and I'm complaining about it. Something's wrong here. People that get accustomed or satisfied and don't think to thank

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God for that manna never find contentment. The problem with the

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Israelites and the problem with us if we engage this way is we've taken a way of thanksgiving that is man -centered, man -centered, self -centered.

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If you take your eyes off God and you are thinking in terms of yourself, you will never be content.

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You will never be thankful in the way Scripture instructs us to be. And that ultimately is a theme of what

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I try to teach, the difference between being God -centered and man -centered. The God -centered person is going to think less of themselves and more of God.

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The man -centered person is going to think far more of themselves than they do of God or of others for that matter.

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So in Psalm 136, we're going to move through it. It's a 26 -verse psalm.

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We're not going to dissect all these verses because time will not permit, but we are going to move through it and I want to look at some of the highlights with you this evening about what

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God -centered thanksgiving looks like. To begin with, number one, we see that God -centered thanksgiving gives thanks to the one true

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God. Notice with me in verse one it says, give thanks to the Lord, give thanks to Yahweh, for He is good.

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Genesis 1 -1 says, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Scripture does not seek to argue or to prove or to debate

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God's existence, it is assumed. Scripture does not seek to debate or argue whether God is good, it simply assumes and states outright that God is good.

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You give thanks to the Lord, not because of what He's done for you, but because He is good.

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We give thanks to the Lord not only when things go our way, we give thanks to God because He is good.

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Why? For His loving kindness endures forever. Now, this word loving kindness here is translated a variety of ways depending on what translation you're using.

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I believe the ESV will use the term steadfast love. You can also translate this

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His loving mercy. I believe the King James, New King James will say that His mercy, something along the lines of His mercy is everlasting or His mercy endures forever.

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His loving kindness endures forever. My favorite is His steadfast love endures forever.

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It's a word that misremembers means His love, His faithfulness, His goodness, His lovingness.

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Everything about who God is endures forever. And we know that God exists outside of time.

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Time is a created work of God. So there is an eternality to God.

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He does not have a beginning or an end. He just simply is. As He told Moses in the burning bush,

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I am that I am. As Jesus said in John 8 when all the people fell down, it's because He said before Abraham was

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I am, ego I me, Greek, I am that I am. I am the self -existent one.

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I have no creator. So we give thanks to the one true God. Give thanks to the

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God of gods for His loving kindness endures forever. Give thanks to the

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Lord of lords for His loving kindness endures forever. And the psalmist here is picking up on Deuteronomy chapter 10 where God instructs the

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Israelites that they are to circumcise their hearts. In Deuteronomy chapter 10 and verse 12 it says,

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So now Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you? But to fear Yahweh your God, to walk in all

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His ways and love Him, serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul.

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My friends, a Christian that lives verse 12 of Deuteronomy 10 consistently doesn't have a problem with man -centered thanksgiving.

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It is not something that is a hurdle to get over, it is a natural, just as naturally as breathing in and out is, we inhale the word of God and we exhale thanksgiving.

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Verse 13 of Deuteronomy 10, keep the commandments of Yahweh and His statutes which

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I am commanding you today for your good. Behold to Yahweh your

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God belong heaven and the highest heavens, the earth and all that is in it. Verse 16, so circumcise your heart, stiffen your neck no longer.

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For Yahweh the Lord your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords. Notice the repetition in Psalm 136.

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He's the great, the mighty, the fearsome God who does not show partiality nor take a bribe. He executes justice for the orphan and the widow and shows love for the sojourner by giving him food and clothing.

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Verse 20, Yahweh your God you shall fear, him you shall serve and to him you shall cling and by his name you shall swear.

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He is your praise, he is your God who has done these great and fearsome things for you which your eyes have seen.

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Verse 21, your fathers went down to Egypt, 70 persons in all and now Yahweh your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven, thus fulfilling his promise to Abraham.

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They went down, when they went into Egypt, 70 persons in all, now they've come out of Egypt and they're more numerous than the sands of the sea and the stars of the heaven.

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He is the God of God, he is the Lord of lords. The second thing we see is that God -centered thanksgiving gives thanks to the

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Creator. Verse 4 says, and I want you to notice here, in this next section, verses 4 through 9, you see to him, to him, to him, to him.

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We see a lot of repetition in a lot of the Psalms because we want to make an emphasis on what's being conveyed.

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So in this him in context, based on verses 1 through 3, we know it's talking about God, so the him is identified to God, him alone does great wonders, for his love and kindness endures forever.

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To him who made the heavens with skill, with understanding, to him, for his love and kindness, his steadfast love endures forever.

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To him who spread out the earth above the waters, for his love and kindness endures forever. To him who made the great lights, the sun to rule by the day, the moon and stars to rule by night.

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Notice the diversity of the creation, but the order in creation.

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Colossians talks about how the whole created order is literally upheld by the power of Christ. That's why my friends, they can talk about whatever they want to talk about on the news, they can call it whatever they want to call it.

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But this earth is going nowhere. This earth one day will be restored and we will live on it for all eternity with Christ in sinless perfect bodies.

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Yes, we need to be good stewards of it, we need to not be polluters, we need not be unkind or necessarily not care about what we do, that's certainly true and good to do.

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But there is no doomsday prophecy that is true when regards to, we will call it global warming, call it whatever you want.

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This earth will last as long as God wants it to and according to God's word, it will last forever.

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Now it will go through a hefty renovation at some point in the future and sin's curse will be lifted, but this earth is going nowhere.

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So don't listen to them. The creator that created this world and put the lights in the sky has every intention of us living on it.

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Why? For his loving kindness endures forever. Number three, we notice that God's centered thanksgiving gives thanks to the

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Savior. Verse 10 through 12, it says, to him who struck the

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Egyptians through their firstborn. If you remember, and this is accounted in Exodus 12, when

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God took down the firstborn of the Egyptians, his loving kindness endures forever.

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Then he brought Israel out from their midst, which is also recorded there in Exodus 12.

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His loving kindness, his steadfast love endures forever with a strong hand and an outstretched arm for his loving kindness endures forever.

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The people of Israel were in Egypt. They were slaves. They were owned.

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They were in a place where they needed someone to save them, and God saved them and brought them out of Egypt.

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And how sad is it that at one point they even said, we were better in Egypt. Look at what

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God's done to us. Mean old Moses, he's let us out just to drag us out here in the wilderness to starve.

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We were better. The people in Egypt as slaves are living better than us. They forgot their

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Savior. They forgot who brought them out. Now that was a part of history.

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That was a part of literal history which occurred, but the history of the Israelites being saved from slavery, being saved from Egyptian rule and brought out and eventually taken to their promised land is a picture and a foreshadowing, if you will, of the ultimate salvation that comes through Jesus Christ.

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We need saving from our sins in a way which is far greater than any slavery you may need in a physical realm, whether you need, some of us, you probably needed saving from a bad job at some point in your life or saving from a bad home life or saving from some situation that you're about to be in a traffic accident or you're in some sort of medical condition and we need to be saved, we want to be redeemed or healed from it.

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Those things are fine and well, but ultimately what mankind needs is being saved from himself.

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Your sin and your flesh is the biggest enemy that you face every day. For your flesh wants you to ignore the word of God and do as you please.

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We need saving. We need the one who struck the Egyptians. We need the one who brought

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Israel out from their midst. We need the one who has the strong hand because his loving kindness endures forever.

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God -centered thanksgiving also gives thanks to the protector, the one true

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God, the creator, the savior, but also the protector. Verse 13 -15, it says to him, notice once again, to him, to him, to God, the psalmist takes no credit for himself.

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To him who divided the Red Sea in two, made Israel pass through the midst of it, overthrew

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Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea. He saves his people.

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He brings them out of Egypt, not just to let them die like they accused God of doing at one point, but no, he protects them now that he's saved them.

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They're on the heels of them as they're leaving, they're coming up on them and God parts the Red Sea, allows them and causes them to go through on dry ground.

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And then the ones that are pursuing them that would seek to harm them, God supernaturally protects them, not just by giving them passage, but by destroying the pursuers.

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God is the protector. We need to be giving thanks to God, our protector.

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My friends, I have no way of knowing or how to articulate this in words where we could actually understand it, but I would venture to say that the amount of protection

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God provides for us every single day of our lives goes completely unnoticed by us.

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Some of it probably by design, by intention on God's part, some of it because we're not looking for it.

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We don't have eyes to see. I think about this not every day, but I would say more days, more often than not,

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I don't know what it is, maybe it's just because I'm getting older, but the whole thing we pray for traveling mercies, that hits me more than,

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I'm just going from carpool to work in the mornings, I think, I made it to work safely this morning,

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I shouldn't be taking that for granted. Or if you ride to Rocky Mountain back, I just rode on the worst interstate in the history of mankind,

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I -95, and I got all the way down there and back and I didn't die. Thank you Jesus. I hate,

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I don't want to use the word hate, we're not supposed to use that, okay I'm sorry, I hate 95, I really do. I despise it with a passion, if I can go 301, if I can go any other way, because everybody rides on the left and they go 45,

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I don't go 45 miles an hour, that'd be a lie. Let's just say they don't go the speed limit, and they drive me nuts, and I'm like, please.

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But I think about it. There's been times, how many times has this happened to you, where you're late going somewhere, and probably y 'all know where I'm going with this, and you finally get out on the road, and somewhere along the way, someone's gotten in a wreck, and they've either been killed or badly injured, and you think, if I had a left on time, that could have been me.

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You might want to take time and give thanks to your protector, how he sovereignly protects us. Also God -centered

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Thanksgiving, we've got three left here, God -centered Thanksgiving gives thanks to the true shepherd, the true shepherd, verse 16 by itself here.

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To him, God, once again, who led his people through the wilderness, we read through scripture so fast,

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I do it, you do it, we all do it, we need to stop doing it, where we do the checklist mentality of reading through verses, we miss so much.

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That three -letter word, led, to him who led, there's so much involved in that.

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Leading them, shepherding them, Psalm 23, the

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Lord is my shepherd, I shall not find myself wanting or lacking, because he is the good shepherd.

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Jesus Christ himself comes on the scene, this is why we may have a literary division between the

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Old and New Testament, but there is no division in God's word. God's word is a comprehensive whole,

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W -H -O -L -E, a whole, it is in harmony with itself. So when

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Jesus comes on the scene and says, I'm the good shepherd, he's fulfilling every one of the promises, every one of the prophecies, every one of the

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Psalms that talks about God being a shepherd, Jesus is that shepherd, and he leads his people through the wilderness.

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Why? Why because his loving kindness, his steadfast love endures forever. In what ways is

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God shepherding you in your life? In what ways in your life have you rejected your shepherd?

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Maybe you didn't like the way he was shepherding you, you know God, things would go a lot better if you just kind of shepherded me a little differently.

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And then later I had to repent. We question God so many ways and so many times.

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So much so that sometimes we don't even realize we're doing it. Now we may never have to wander for 40 years through a literal wilderness, but there's a lot of spiritual wildernesses we can go through in our lives, is there not?

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Sin can definitely be a cause of them. I tell you what, for me, for a long time, and I think

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Gina would attest that I'm doing much better than this, y 'all can ask her afterwards, but waiting was a big issue for me.

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Big sinful wilderness for me. I'd get lost in it. I'd be so consumed with my man -centered thinking of, this hasn't happened yet, therefore

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I won't be joyful or content until it does. So that thing I read at the beginning, guess what?

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Yours truly is guilty of it. I won't be content until I have this.

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Or that. It took me a long time to work through a lot of that.

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Now do I do stumble occasionally? Oh yeah, nobody's perfect. But I would venture to say my ability to wait on the

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Lord has increased, and I've said this before and I'll mention it again here in passing, it's the ultimate, if you ask

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God for patience, what is he going to do? He's going to give you situations to learn patience. He doesn't, and I always bring this up, it's not like the

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Matrix, right? You know, the Matrix, and they're on the roof, and the girl character, her name's

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Trinity, which I think is a little blasphemous, but it's a movie, just enjoy it. She says, you know, there's this helicopter, it's the only way to get off the roof, and he's like, do you know how to fly one of those things, and she says, not yet.

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And she has the guy downloading to her mind, because they're in this computer simulation how to fly the helicopter, and within seconds she knows how to do it.

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Life isn't like that. It'd be nice if it were. Like when

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Keanu Reeves, and they downloaded him to do all the martial arts stuff, and he's like, I know Kung Fu. I'm like, that'd be nice, it's just not the way it works.

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God teaches us, yes, academically, intellectually, understanding his word, those old things go without saying, they're assumed here.

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But when you get beyond that, primarily he teaches us experientially.

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Why do you think people's testimonies are filled with stories of experience, not academic knowledge?

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Yes, all that's important, yes, as Christians, we need to be learning Bible basics and getting deep and all these things, but we do not need to neglect the

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Christian experience. And when I tell God and recognize, I'm having an issue waiting here,

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I think I should have already been doing X, Y, Z, I've now had to go through years of experience of nothing changing in the realm that I thought should have changed, because God says,

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I need you to learn to be content and thankful for me, and thankful for what you have, and thankful for the ways

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I am using you before you may ever get to something else.

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Because I used to tell and say, I don't understand why I'm not doing this, that, or the other, so many years of my life are getting wasted here, why isn't

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God using me? And now I say, I was wasting so many years of my life because I wasn't allowing myself to be obedient when

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God was trying to use me because it wasn't the way I determined it should have been. You see the change in thinking?

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Why do you think I preach so much about man -centered versus God -centered understanding? It's because it's where I fail the most!

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Any good preacher is probably going to preach about where he fails the most. Andy does it, this

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Andy does it, if we had another Andy, I'd say that Andy does it, but we don't, we just have two, so it's this and this, but yes, it's where I fail the most.

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It was man -centered, it was self -centered, it was I want this, I want that, and I'm not going to be happy,

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I'm going to dig my heels in, God, I'm not going to be happy, can you do it for me? God says, look son, I'm eternal,

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I can outweigh you, I got all day, you're going to eventually come around because you're going to realize

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I saved you for a purpose, and I determine what that purpose looks like, you see?

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And it wasn't a mean thing, it wasn't a hard thing, it was a restful thing to repent and fall into God -centered thanksgiving in the arms of God, because now every day

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I look at it as, what is it you've set before me? Not what should have been set before me, because He is the good shepherd,

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He is the true shepherd, not Andy. Two more in this psalm to look at.

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Number six, God -centered thanksgiving gives thanks to the one who brings victory, the verses 17 -22 it says, to him who struck great kings, killed mighty kings,

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Shehon, Sihon, king of Amorites, Og, king of Bashan, and gave, notice, it isn't just that he helped them have conquest to kill these kings, but that he gave their land as an inheritance.

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It's the normal understanding of what is in English here, when it says gave their land, it's coming right in context behind the part where it talks about how

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God gave victory over these kings, so it's this king's land, their land, that's now given to Israel as an inheritance, because if you'll remember in the book of Joshua, all those conquests, all those victories, he kept telling them, serve me and I will give you victory,

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I will dispose of the people in front of you, I will give you their land, now ultimately, yes, it's

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God's land, it's Israelite's land, but they had to go in and take it. He gave their land as an inheritance, even an inheritance to Israel, his servant, for his love and kindness endures forever.

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You don't have to turn there with me, but in Joshua 21, speaking of Joshua, Joshua chapter 21, verses 43 through 45, it says, so Yahweh the

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Lord gave Israel all the land which he had sworn to give to their fathers, and they possessed it, and they lived in it.

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And Lord gave them rest on every side, according to all that he had sworn to their fathers, and no one of all their enemies stood before them.

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Yahweh gave all their enemies into their hand. Notice this in verse 45 of Joshua 21, it says, not a word, not one promise of the good promises which

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Yahweh had promised to the house of Israel failed. All came to pass.

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Now that verse is a little wordy in English when it comes from Hebrew, but notice not one of the promises out of all the promises that who gave, that Yahweh, God, the

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Lord had promised. God is the promise giver, God is the promise fulfiller, and everything he told his people came to pass.

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Not one single thing that God promised failed to happen.

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Now there have been many things that I have promised people that have not happened. There have been many times where I may have thought something would have been better and it definitely was not.

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But he is the one that brings victory. He is the one that gives us victory primarily over sin and death through his son

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Jesus Christ. Which brings us to our last one for tonight, this evening.

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God -centered Thanksgiving gives thanks to the provider. We've seen the one true

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God, we've seen the creator, we've seen the savior, we've seen the protector, the true shepherd, the one who brings victory, and now lastly the provider.

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Verse 23, who remembered us, this who is God, remembers us in our lowest state for his loving kindness endures forever and has snatched us from our adversaries, who gives food to all flesh, give thanks to the

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God of heaven for his loving kindness endures forever. Notice when we are in need, when we are in need of something, when we find ourselves in a weak or lowest state, he is the one that endures for us.

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When we find ourselves in an adversarial situation or need of help, he's the one that his love endures for us.

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When we need food, when we need bread, we not just have actual bread, actual food, when we sit down, if we pray over a meal, if we give thanks for our daily bread, this is where a lot of that's coming from.

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We give thanks to him who gives food to all flesh because he's the provider, thus we give thanks to the

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God of heaven for his loving kindness endures forever.

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So what's got to change for you in your life to go from a man -centered understanding of thanksgiving to a

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God -centered understanding of thanksgiving? You don't have to have all seven of these in front of you at all times.

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For one, your head would get really busy and you'd be tired. I don't sit around and rehearse or think through all seven of these and check them each one off, but at different points in your life, these show up, don't they?

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There's been times in my life where I've been thankful to the protector, my provider, my shepherd.

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There's been times where I've really needed victory and he's brought it. There's times where I've been very thankful he created me.

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I don't exist if there's not a God to create me. I'm very thankful that he's the one true

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God, the Lord of Lords, the God of Gods, because no matter what happens in American presidential elections, whether it makes you happy or sad, he's still the one reigning.

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He's still the one on the throne. I don't care what happens in the history of mankind.

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It's all under the sovereign watch care of God. All I have to do is stay focused on him.

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Stay focused on the source of every one of these.

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That's why the psalm starts with, give thanks to Yahweh, for he is good.

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It ends with give thanks to the God of heaven. It begins and ends with God, which is the essence, the textbook definition, the theme of what it means to be

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God -centered. If you're God -centered in your theology, in your life, in your church and everywhere else, to be

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God -centered means you start and end with God. Man has no place.

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We do not insert ourselves into the equation. My day begins with God, it ends with God.

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My decision -making has to begin with God and end with God. So much of my life, it was a pursuit of what

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I felt was best. This is the refrain of 99 % of our testimonies, is it not?

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I sought myself, I sought it my way, right away, Burger King now, and now I seek

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God's way. Let me tell you something, life, in a lot of ways, gets a little tougher, but you find yourself in a lot of rest, a lot of peace.

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I sleep very well at night, unless I sleep the wrong way and my neck hurts, but I sleep pretty good at night, because I serve the one true

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God who is my creator, my savior, my protector, my provider, brings me victory, and he shepherds me, and he'll shepherd you.

34:52

And you can trust him, because he is the one true God, the God of God, the Lord of Lords. So my friends, give thanks to Yahweh, for he is good.