Good Morning!
In the sermon Sunday I kind of joked about Presbyterians not being the kind of folks to shout, and then I shouted Hallelujah. Sorry about getting a little too Baptisty there for a moment. 😉 While there is some truth to the old “frozen chosen” moniker it has not always been that way. Our Covenanter forefathers especially were known to praise the Lord with psalms in such gusto that their exuberance would give their position away to the wicked government soldiers who were hunting them down. To be honest we should be like that as well. People ought to be calling the police on the noisy Presbyterians at Bethany who can be heard down 161 on the Lord’s Day singing them Bible Songs too loud. Why should it be like that? Because as the passage I quoted on Sunday, Isaiah 51, notes we have a lot to be grateful for. We have a big gospel. We should celebrate it with a big voice in the melody found in our newborn hearts. Heaven is going to be a deafening place what with all the trumpets and singing to be heard around the throne of the Lord.
In today’s worship and prayer help we’re going to talk a little about what it means to give thanks and why people should know we are thankful.
But before we do that I want to go back to that good news for a second. You ever sit and think about what exactly Jesus Christ has done for us at the cross? I mean really thought about it? It’s just unreal. The very God of very God. The same God that we sinned against, rebelled against, and told to take a long walk off a short pier has ignored our pleas to leave us in our transgressions. Instead, He has not only prepared a place for us in the Heavenly places from before the foundations of the world so that we would have a home to live in for the future, but He has put on our flesh, leaving His home, and was born, suffered, and died to raise us from the spiritual and physical death we participate in daily. He did all that because He loves us. As our Shorter Catechism question from last week said, “…out of His good pleasure…” Jehovah made a promise in the Covenant of Grace to save us, and to do that the Father’s only begotten Son died for you.
The just for the unjust. Being yet sinners Christ died for the ungodly.
That’s why we call it amazing grace. Because it is amazing!
If it has no effect on your soul to just read those words there is something wrong. I’m a big believer in what is called “experimental” or “experiential” religion. That doesn’t mean that all Christians need to have some kind of euphoria or outward emotional faith they wear on their sleave like some Jesus-oriented hippies. What it does point to is a belief that moves the spirit to humility, graciousness, and a full-throated desire to get to know the Lord better. We are then so affected by the gospel truth that they become not just cold hard facts we know in our brains, but a living and abiding hope which surrounds our entire being. Again, just to be clear, this ain’t no Pentecostal awakening. Nor is it saying that Christians are always to be happy, clappy go-lucky. Sometimes the knowledge in which we see Jesus causes us to lament and be downcast due to the acute recognition of our sins and our inappropriate desires. Yet even in the midst of this wrestling that we are called to do with the old man we see that our gospel testimony shows that our Christian faith is not just something we know about, but that is known by us. J.C. Ryle has a great quote that I once read in a piece by Sherman Isbell where he says:
“You believe perhaps, there is forgiveness of sins. You believe that Christ died for sinners, and that he offers a pardon to the most ungodly. But are you forgiven yourself? . . . What does it avail the sick man that the doctor offers him a medicine, if he only looks at it, and does not swallow it down? Except you lay hold for your own soul, you will be as surely lost as if there was no forgiveness at all.... There must be actual business between you and Christ.”
You can hear a little bit of the Apostle James there, “You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble!”
So going back for a moment to the whole question of the hour, what it means to give thanks, we see from the seraphic Anglican Dr. Ryle that the message here is fairly simple, as are most gospel things. If you know Jesus Christ as your Redeemer and Lord then your response to that blessed news must be nothing less than your all and all. Having put your hand to the plow its best to keep your eyes upon the glory of the Heavens and the goodness of your God. For what did Lot’s wife hope to see when she turned back? What do we long for when we reconsider our place in the kingdom for the spoiled porridge of the flesh? Knowing the Savior in our hearts sends a signal to the rest of our body and soul to rejoice in the peace that passes all understanding.
Anticipation is a word we hear a lot this time of year. Yet it’s a word which should be a signal sign of the believer’s mindset regardless of where the calendar might be. The Sabbath Day worship which we do every week is a time set aside by Jehovah for His people to come into His presence and be fed, watered, and renewed, to rejoice and give praise. Each week rather than just being a dull repeat of the Sunday before is a new opportunity to see Jesus as He is, the savior of sinners, the encourager of the lonely, and the surety of all believer for all of eternity.
If this can’t make you sing loud and proud, what can?
For today’s reading help here is a piece on the gospel:
https://www.monergism.com/what-gospel-2
Blessings in Christ,
Rev. Benjamin Glaser
Pastor, Bethany ARP Church