The message given in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on Sunday night, November 8, 2020. The Bible verses used are Psalm 100.
Wanda’s favorite TV channel is the
Hallmark Movie Channel. That channel has
been running Christmas movies for at least two weeks now. I checked the calendar, and it is still only
November 8. But still, they’re already
celebrating Christmas.
Now,
that’s not sinful or anything. But
still, this is November, and November is the month of Thanksgiving. And while it’s not sinful to celebrate
Christmas early, I think it is wrong to just skip over Thanksgiving. After all, the Bible talks a lot about
it. Not the holiday itself, obviously,
but the idea of giving thanks: why we
should do it, how it benefits us, and how it affects our relationship with God.
The Old Testament, especially, tells
us all the time that we should thank God.
In fact, one of the Old Testament rules that the people had to follow,
one that's referred to lots of times in the Old Testament, is the thank
offering. This was a specific offering
that was to be given to God at certain times and in certain ways as an
expression of thanks to God.
And even though we don't follow the
Old Testament rules on thank offerings, we still carry on the spirit of
them. After all, we still take up an
offering every week, right? The real
purpose of that offering is not to pay the bills of the church. It's not even to fund mission projects or
things like that. That's what the money
is used for, but that's not the reason we take up an offering. We take up an offering to give thanks to
God. That's the real purpose of it.
One of the things people will say sometimes
to make fun of the Christian faith—and I'll bet some of you have heard this
one—is “Why do we have to thank God all the time? Is God so dependent on praise and thanks that
God needs to constantly hear us say it?
Is God vain, or weak, or needy, or something?”
Obviously, none of that's true. God is not vain, or weak, or needy, or
anything else. God does not need to hear
our thanks. We need to say it. We need to thank God for our benefit, not for
God's benefit.
One
of the reasons we need to do that is just to make sure we have our priorities
straight. It's to make sure we recognize
how important God is to our lives.
Because
it can be easy to forget, you know? One
of the things about our human nature is that we tend to take things for granted
a lot of times. If I go to the store and
buy, say, some hamburger, and it turns out to be pretty good hamburger, am I
going to go to the store and thank them for selling me such good hamburger? Probably not.
I'll eat it and I'll go on about my business. But if I go to the store and buy some
hamburger and it turns out to be lousy, am I going to go to the store and
complain? Probably, yes. It's just the way we are.
And
we tend to be that way toward God, too.
When things do not go the way we think they should go, we tend to be
pretty quick to complain to God and ask why God is allowing those things to
happen. When things go the way we think
they should go, though, we often don't take the time to go to God and say thank
you for that. We just accept it and go
on about our business.
That's
not due to a lack of faith, necessarily.
It could be, but it also could be that we just take God for
granted. We know God is good, so when
things go in a way we think is good, we just figure, well, okay then. God is doing what God is supposed to do. “God's in His heaven, all's right with the
world”, as the saying goes.
And
there's truth in that. God is good. Good is what God is supposed to do. It's just that there's a really fine line
between recognizing that God is good and thinking God owes it to us to be good,
that God owes it to us to do good things for us. And that's not true. God does not owe us anything. And when we think that way, we get our
priorities out of order. We start
thinking God is there to serve us, rather than realizing that we are here to
serve God.
That's
why we read Psalm 100 today. I don't
often preach from the psalms. We read
one in the morning service every week as a responsive reading, but I don't very
often preach on it. But there's a lot of
good stuff in the psalms, and we need to not just read them, but think about
what they say and do what they tell us to do.
Our
psalm today tells us to “shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.” When's the last time you did that? When is the last time you shouted for joy to
the Lord? Did you do it in the last
week? In the last month? In the last year? Have you ever done it? Have you ever been so full of joy for what
God has done that you shouted for joy, that you shouted your thanks to God?
Now,
I know we're midwesterners. Shouting for
joy is not really our thing around here.
And yet, I go to a lot of football games and volleyball games, and in
the winter I go to a lot of basketball games and wrestling meets, and I hear a
lot of shouting for joy at those things.
I'm not being critical of that—you all know I love sports, and if you've
seen me at a game you know I shout as much as anyone. The thing is, though, how come we can shout
for joy when our sports team wins, but we cannot shout for joy for all the
things God has done for us?
We
should shout for joy. The psalm tells us
why. “Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are
his people, the sheep of his pasture.”
That,
right there, should be enough to make us shout for joy. God made us, and we are his. That's what it means to be God's
children. We are God's people, the sheep
of God's pasture.
And
yet, that's what we so often take for granted.
And that's sad. Not because we're
going to go to hell for it or anything, but because when we take those things
for granted, we deprive ourselves of the joy of knowing them.
We
are God's people. Think about that. Think about how awesome that is. God made us, and we are God's people. We are the sheep of God's pasture.
That's
incredible. We did nothing to deserve
that. We never could. We could do nothing to deserve God creating
us at all. And we can do nothing to
deserve being called God's people. I'm
not saying we're all terrible people, but we're people. We're weak.
We're flawed. We're sinful. And yet, the all-powerful, flawless, sinless,
perfect God claims us and calls us God's people. God loves us, and God is with us, and God
helps us, despite who we God is and who we are.
The
wonder of that is beyond my ability to describe. The thought of that should constantly fill us
with joy. That joy is we lose when we
take what God does for granted. That joy
is what we take away from ourselves when we don't think about all the amazing
things God has done for us and when we don't stop and thank God for them.
That's
why we need to do what Psalm 100 says.
We need to come into God's presence with thanksgiving. We need to come with praise. We need to give thanks to God. Not because God needs to hear it, but because
we need to say it. Because when we say
it, and when we mean it, we realize all that God does for us. And when we realize that, we cannot help but
feel incredible awe and wonder and joy.
And
then, we will realize why it is that we are asked to serve God. God does not ask us to serve as some sort of
punishment or duty or obligation. God
does not ask us to serve because God needs us to do things. God could do anything and everything God
wants to do without us. God does not
need us to do anything. We are allowed
to serve God. We are given the privilege
to serve God. When we think about how
great and how good and how loving God is, we realize that it is an incredible
honor to be allowed to serve our wonderful God.
As
Psalm 100 says, the Lord is good. God's
love endures forever. God's faithfulness
continues through all generations.
So,
if you're struggling tonight, if you're having trouble feeling joy, if you feel
like things are going wrong and you don't know what to do, read Psalm 100 and
really think about it. Think about the
fact that you are one of God's people.
Realize that God is not there to serve us, we are there to serve
God. Realize what an incredible honor
that is. And then, do what the psalm
says. Shout for joy to our amazing, incredible, awesome God.
No comments:
Post a Comment