November, 2024 - The Text Messages

November 25, 2024November 25, 2024

Grateful Hearts: Reflecting on the Goodness of God

“Make a joyful shout to the Lord, all you lands! Serve the Lord with gladness; Come before His presence with singing. Know that the Lord, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, And into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him and bless His name. For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, And His truth endures to all generations.” (Psalm 100:1-5)

Psalm 100 is like the churches dress rehearsal for heaven. The Jubilate as this Psalm has been termed was daily used by both the ancient Jews and the earliest Christians in the worship of God, and it is still sung today as the Old One Hundredth. This Psalm, from (v.1) is a call for ALL people to “shout to the Lord!” It is a call to delight in, rejoice over, and brag on the self-existent and eternal God. It is a time to rejoice in the God of all creation.

Is that how we come into God’s house? Do we come in rejoicing?

The late pastor J. Vernon McGee said, “I would emphasize the fact that God does not want you to (regularly) come before Him with a long face.” Adding, “at the time of this writing most of the bars have what is called a “happy hour.” I wish we had a “happy hour” in church, without the liquid. Let us tune up and get ready to worship the Lord.” ^[i]

Because God is Good, Joyfully Serve Him

(vv.1-2) “Make a joyful shout to the Lord, all you lands! Serve the Lord with gladness; Come before His presence with singing.”

It has been suggested that because of the psalmists call for All of the earth to “raise a shout for the Lord” (Psalm 100:1 Septuagint) that this psalm points to the honor of Jesus the Messiah especially during His millennial reign on the earth (Rev,. 20:1-4). It suggests a time of the universal praise and adoration of Jesus; a time as one commentator put it, “when the entire world will recognize and sing ‘Joy to the world, the Lord is come!’”

This is not to say that the world at large has nothing for which to thank the Lord today. His common grace – the sunrise and the rain (Matt, 5:45), His kindness (Luke 6:35), His patience (2 Peter 3:9), His compassion (Psalm 145:9) but I dare say that until a lost soul realizes the grace of God upon his life through faith in Jesus, he will not recognize those common graces at all. Thus, only the faithful will shout joyfully to the Lord both now and forever more!

Not only are we to joyfully shout but we are also to gleefully serve the Lord – (v.2) “serve the Lord with gladness.” It is rare when you find someone so spiritually free and filled with the presence of the Lord that their service is expressed as true worship. The Tanakh (another name for the Hebrew Bible) substitutes the word worship for service and makes the powerful connection between everything we do being done to glorify God (1 Cor. 10:31).

Finally, in the first stanza of this psalm we are told to “come before His presence with singing.” With r^enânâh – joyful singing.

Why? Why should God be worshipped so robustly?

(v.3) offers the answer “Know that the Lord, He is God!” There is no other God who created us – mankind has made many gods in his own mind and with his own hands, but God is God. He is God – unapproachably high or supreme: (v.3b) “He made us” and frankly, I think that the second part of that is a translational error as there is no conceivable way that we physically made ourselves. On the other hand, many of us think that we are self-made men and women. “I did that!” We say: “I am who I am because of my labor, my effort, my knowledge, my ability, my talent.” This was the mentality in Laodicea in (Rev.3:17) where they said: “I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’—and do(did) not know that you (they were) are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked—” With these words, I think we are reminded that not only apart from God are we nothing but we also that we desperately need Him. The Tanakh translates the phrase “He made us and not we ourselves” as “He made us, and we are His.”

We worship Him because we have been bought at the price of His Son’s precious blood. (1 Cor. 6:20, 1 Peter 1:19). We worship Him not only because of His unapproachable greatness but also because of His intimate nearness: (v.3c) “We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.” We are His sheep who believe upon the name of Jesus. We are those sheep over whom the Lord the Shepherd (John 10:14-16) and because He is our Shepherd, not only “shall we not” but we DO NOT WANT or lack for any good thing now or in the eternal future.

Because God is Good, Praise and Worship Him

(v.4) “Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, And into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him and bless His name.”

This being a call to spiritual thanksgiving we should bring the sacrifice of praise. The writer of Hebrews defines this in (Heb. 13:15): “Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name. But do not forget to do good and to share, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.” We are to come into His house with thanksgiving and praise because God is good.

We bless the Lord – we adore Him for all He has done and for who He is in actuality and to us. As we said, in actuality His is the Most-High God but to us He is Abba Father – and “because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses” making us “alive with Christ.” (Eph. 2:4-5). We thank Him for His salvation. We thank Him because (v.5) “His mercy is everlasting” – “through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, (Lam. 3:22-23) because His compassions fail not, they are new every morning: great is your faithfulness!” The word ʾĕmûnâh translated truth in our bible is rendered faithfulness in the Tanakh where it concludes: “His faithfulness is for all generations.” In (Psalm 40) David declared that God had “put a new song in his mouth – praise to our God.” Going further, David said: “Many, O Lord my God, are Your wonderful works which You have done; and Your thoughts toward us cannot be recounted to You in order; if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.” (Psalm 40:3, 5)

God (Eph. 1:3) “has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.”

Jesus has (Rev. 1:5-6) “washed us from our sins in His own blood and has made us kings and priests unto God and His Father – to Him be glory and dominion forever!”

We all have things to be grateful for here. Like Hannah for her son (1 Sam. 1:10-19), Hezekiah for his healing (2 Kings 20:1-6), David for his victory (1 Sam 17:45-47), and Solomon for his wisdom (1 Kings 3:5-14), God has answered, God has been merciful, God has provided, and God has been present.

Christian, there is one thing about which you exclusively have reason to be grateful. Unlike Hannah, Hezekiah, David, or Solomon, you KNOW that you have been redeemed from a devil’s Hell – a real and everlasting torment to be experinced by all who refuse the salvation of the Lord through Jesus Christ. If you were the poorest person in the poorest country in the world, because the priceless treasure of eternal life which you recieved as a grace through Jesus Christ from our forgiving God you have something for which to be forever, joyfully grateful.

The Lord has given but He has also taken away. Up against our sense of gratitude at this time of year presses grief.

To Serve and Worship God Well – Count Your Blessings

(1 Thess. 5:18) “in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

Some people never need to be told to do that because gratitude is engrained into the DNA of their character, while others have to be encouraged constantly because complaint is a part of theirs.

Which are you?

Do we not have much to be thankful for?

Some of the things for which I am thankful are:

The words of the preacher who once told me that Jesus loves Me. The song of the Cardinal. The roar of the surf. The crunch of fresh fallen snow under my boots. The laughter of my wife. The playful antics of my children and grandchildren. The silence of a calm morning, and the noise of a windy one. The clang of a rope gently beating against the flagpole to which an American flag is tethered, and I am thankful for my health.

That is a brief list of the things for which I am thankful.

But what if I had cancer?

What if I was blind, or deaf?

What if I was imprisoned in a hospital room too weak to go anywhere?

What if everyone I have ever loved was gone and I was all alone?

Could I be thankful in circumstances like those? Could you?

Some of you are in one of these situations right now.

Should we let our grief cancel our gratitude? Job did not. Twice he was stricken severely and twice he responded in a way that expresses gratitude in the worst of situations:

(Job 1:21) “And he said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, And naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord.””

(Job 2:10) “Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?”

The fact is, that we have innumerable reasons for which to be thankful from the only God worthy of our gratitude. Some of you are hurting this season. You hurt because something or someone you had is missing from your life this year. To be thankful right now, you may need to see the world and your life through a different lens. Consider George Matheson, Scottish minister and hymnwriter of the late 19^th century known as “the blind preacher” who had all but completely lost his eyesight by age 18. Once he prayed: “My God, I have never thanked you for my thorn. I have thanked you a thousand times for my roses, but never once for my thorn.”^[ii]

My prayer for those who are hurting during this season is that you can thank God anyway. He has given. He did bless. He may have taken; and yet for all of these He is still to be praised; may His presence be enough to carry you through this time. To all I say: May your season of Thanks and Giving – be full of reflection God’s goodness and many blessings in your life and may your mouths full of praise to His holy name!

^[i] McGee, J. V. (1997). Thru the Bible commentary (electronic ed., Vol. 2, p. 822). Thomas Nelson.

[ii] Shenton, T. (2006). Opening up 1 Thessalonians (pp. 109–110). Leominster: Day One Publications.

November 19, 2024November 19, 2024

The Grace of Giving Generously

“But this I say: He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work. As it is written: “He has dispersed abroad, He has given to the poor; His righteousness endures forever.” Now may He who supplies seed to the Sower, and bread for food, supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness, while you are enriched in everything for all liberality, which causes thanksgiving through us to God. For the administration of this service not only supplies the needs of the saints, but also is abounding through many thanksgivings to God, while, through the proof of this ministry, they glorify God for the obedience of your confession to the gospel of Christ, and for your liberal sharing with them and all men, and by their prayer for you, who long for you because of the exceeding grace of God in you. Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!” (2 Corinthians 9:6-15 NKJV)

Giving because God gave is the greatest expression of our faith, love, and gratitude toward God. In giving, we reflect the generous heart of our Creator, who has given us the greatest gift of all: His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The passage before us is often used in a sermon to promote tithing in the church.

Most people understand tithing as a demanded duty rather than a voluntary expression of gratitude and worship to our most Holy God.

In my younger days, I delivered papers for three local newspaper outlets, mowed lawns in the summer, and shoveled snow from driveways every winter – this was how I earned money. When the holidays came around, it became my greatest joy to spend the money I made on gifts for the people I loved – especially my mom. My mom was a generous woman. She went out of her way to make birthdays and holidays special for our family. My mom deserved to be showered with gifts. She did so much to care for us all. But during the holidays, it was not her worthiness that drove me with joy to find the best gift for her – it was my love. She did not demand my gift, nor did my dad insist that I have one for her – I did it from a happy and generous heart of love and appreciation for her.

In my mind, our giving to God ought to be just as sincere, voluntary, generous, and joyful as that of a loving child for his or her parents.

The Grace of Giving

(2 Cor. 8:2,7) “Moreover, brethren, we make known to you the grace of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia: that in a great trial of affliction, the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded in the riches of their liberality…But as you abound in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in all diligence, and in your love for us—see that you abound in this grace also.”

The church in Macedonia was a general term for an association of three churches in the region: The Berean church, the church at Philippi, and the church at Thessalonica. Their “trial of affliction” was the persecution that they were suffering for faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Despite their hardship and “deep poverty,” the believers in this region joyfully expressed the grace of God through their own generous gift of grace to a group of people whom they had never met.

The Corinthian church along with the other gentile churches which Paul had established throughout the Graeco-Roman empire were made aware of the needs of the church at Jerusalem by the apostle. “The ministering to the saints” (2 Cor. 9:1) referred to a collection Paul had commanded in (1 Cor. 16:1-4) to be set aside in every church (in Galatia, Macedonia, and Corinth) on the Lord’s day and dispensed annually for (Romans 15:26) “the poor among the saints who are in Jerusalem.”

Paul’s concern in the first five verses about the readiness of the offering at Corinth serves as a reminder that we too should always be ready and willing to give.

Generosity Begins in the Heart

(vv.6-7) “But this I say: He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver.”

In (v.6-7) Paul seems to be drawing from (Prov. 11:24-26) to appeal to the Corinthians:

“There is one who scatters, yet increases more; And there is one who withholds more than is right, But it leads to poverty. The generous soul will be made rich, And he who waters will also be watered himself. The people will curse him who withholds grain, But blessing will be on the head of him who sells it.”

Paul and the writer of Proverbs used agricultural terms to say that “the size of the harvest corresponds to the scope of the sowing.” Another way to put it positively is this: sow a blessing, reap a blessing. Consider these words from (Deut.15:7, 10-11):

“If there is among you a poor man of your brethren, within any of the gates in your land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart nor shut your hand from your poor brother…you shall surely give to him, and your heart should not be grieved when you give to him, because for this thing the Lord your God will bless you in all your works and in all to which you put your hand. For the poor will never cease from the land; therefore, I command you, saying, ‘You shall open your hand wide to your brother, to your poor and your needy, in your land.’”

It is worth noting that with the words “so let each one give,” Paul sets an expectation for those who have received grace from the Lord to give. While this is a command, Paul tempers it by saying, “as he purposes in his heart.” This phrase might be better communicated as: “let each one give as he is CONVICTED in his heart.” Paul’s intention was for the believers in Corinth to experience blessings through their generosity (Prov. 19:17; 22:9); blessings “which would not occur if they gave reluctantly or under compulsion because God loves a cheerful giver.”[i] Like our obedience to every other command of Jesus, giving must be a volitional response to God’s grace and command. The phrase “for God loves a cheerful giver” certainly suggests that good works done in Jesus’ name please God (Matt. 5:16, Acts 20:35), but it seems more accurate to associate generosity with one of the identifying traits of the Christian.

The Blessings of Giving: The Giver is Blessed with More to Give

(vv.8-11a) “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work. As it is written: “He has dispersed abroad, He has given to the poor; His righteousness endures forever.” Now may He who supplies seed to the Sower, and bread for food, supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness, while you are enriched in everything for all liberality.”

You have no doubt heard the expression “you can’t outgive God.” For clarity, the phrase should read, “you can’t outgive God’s SUPPLY.” Generous giving is derived from the grace of God, who makes His gracious supply of all needed things super-abound toward us so that every generous giver would super-abound for every good work or charitable deed.

Consider the giving of the poor widow of whom Jesus took note in (Mark 12:41-44), she put into the offering all that she had. Likewise, the widow of Zarephath who having only (1 Kings 17:12) “a handful of flour in a bin, and a little oil in a jar” made a cake from it for the prophet Elijah believing the promise He spoke from the Lord (v.14): “The bin of flour shall not be used up, nor shall the jar of oil run dry, until the day the Lord sends rain on the earth.” Both of these women believed that God’s grace would supply their need because they held His gifts with an open hand. Paul taught as much to the church at Philippi when he wrote (Phil. 4:19): “And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” As that congregation continued to generously give to the needs of others, Paul was confident, as he was in Corinth, that God would graciously “fill them up again.” Not only does God bless the giver with more to give in (v.9) but Paul’s invocation in (v.10) entreats God to “multiply the seed which these believers have sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness.” That phrase implies that material seed – like these shoe boxes, may reap a spiritual harvest. Such is the goal of all giving in the church – whether a tithe or a grace-gift, whether an act of kindness, a word of encouragement, or a moment of vulnerability as you bear witness to another person about the gift of God available to all through the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Blessings of Giving: Needs are Met and God is Glorified

(vv.11b-15) “…while you are enriched in everything for all liberality, which causes thanksgiving through us to God. For the administration of this service not only supplies the needs of the saints, but also is abounding through many thanksgivings to God, while, through the proof of this ministry, they glorify God for the obedience of your confession to the gospel of Christ, and for your liberal sharing with them and all men, and by their prayer for you, who long for you because of the exceeding grace of God in you. Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!”

Paul had a dual motive in taking up the “collection for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem.” On the one hand he says in (v. 11b) that it supplies the needs of the saints, and with his words in (v.10) the needs of potential saints as well but on the other hand, the “administration of this service” was to validate and serve as proof (v.13) to the Jewish believers at Jerusalem of Paul’s God given ministry to the Gentiles and to their conversion and confession of faith in the Lord Jesus.

The gratitude which generous giving produces is profound.

The recipients of the grace of giving pray down God’s blessing on those who had generously and sacrificially given for their needs (v.14). More importantly, since it is God who is ministering through the giver, super-abundant thanksgivings are lifted up to God. The final, celebratory phrase of (v.15) simply declares that no man has dived to the depths of the fullness of God’ grace – the half has yet to be told! “One cannot read these two chapters of Pauls’ second letter to Corinth without gaining a new attitude toward giving. In the Christian life, there is no such thing as “material” and “spiritual.” All that we have comes from God, and all that we have must be used for spiritual ends. Paul teaches that giving is not a burden but a blessing. He shows us that true Christian giving enriches the life and opens the fountains of God’s blessings. Giving is a grace (8:1, 6–7, 9, 19; 9:8 and 14), and the Christian who understands something of grace will understand how to give.”^[ii]

[i] Beal, M. S. (2016). Corinth. In J. D. Barry, D. Bomar, D. R. Brown, R. Klippenstein, D. Mangum, C. Sinclair Wolcott, L. Wentz, E. Ritzema, & W. Widder (Eds.), The Lexham Bible Dictionary. Lexham Press.

^[ii] Wiersbe, W. W. (1992). Wiersbe’s expository outlines on the New Testament (p. 501). Victor Books.