“1 Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. 2 Let us come before Him with thanksgiving and extol Him with music and song. 3 For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. 4 In His hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. 5 The sea is his, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land.
6 Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; 7 for He is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under His care. 8 Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the desert, 9 where your fathers tested and tried me though they had seen what I did. 10 For forty years I was angry with that generation; I said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways.” 11 So I declared on oath in my anger, “They shall never enter my rest.”
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Thanksgiving is always in style. That means that thanksgiving isn’t restricted to a day or a season. We restrict other holidays. We don’t put up Christmas lights in September. We don’t dress in green in July. We don’t set off fireworks in December. Those holidays aren’t always in season. Thanksgiving is always in season. We are to express it regularly. This morning we are going to think about how to express it regularly. Thanksgiving is expressed in emotion and action. That’s the claim of this sermon: thanksgiving is expressed in emotion and action.
We will study this in two points. We are borrowing the names of these points from John Goldingay because I don’t think I can improve on them. First, we will think about out-loud enthusiasm. Second, we will think about outward expressions. First, in verses 1-5, we will think about out-loud enthusiasm. Second, in verses 6-11, we will think about outward expressions.
First: out-loud enthusiasm. This is what’s known as a Psalm of thanksgiving. It begins with an invitation to do exactly what we are doing right now—“Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before Him with thanksgiving and extol Him with music and song.”
It is good to take a step back from time to time and realize that thanks to church many of your regular habits are godly. Giving thanks to God on Thanksgiving Day might be routine for us but it is a godly routine. We sang Come, You Thankful People, Come at the beginning of this time of worship. We did it in obedience to verse 1, “Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord.” When we share our thanksgivings, we will be obeying verse 2, “Let us come before Him with thanksgiving.” Be encouraged that what you are doing right now is exactly the sort of thing God would have you do.
Now there is also a possible growth edge here for us too. It’s found in verse 1, “let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.” This thanksgiving shouting is, in the words, of one Old Testament scholar, “the raucous and boisterous [noise] associated with a World Cup soccer game.” That’s the out-loud enthusiasm of thanksgiving.
Boisterous, noisy, raucous—these words fit with verse 1, “let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.” They fit with Psalm 27:6, “at His sacred tent I will sacrifice with shouts of joy; I will sing and make music to the Lord.” They fit with Psalm 98:4, “Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music.” They fit with the best-known thanksgiving Psalm, Psalm 100, “Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.”
Now some of you grew up in traditions that practiced boisterous worship. I grew up in this tradition and I think it is fair to say that “the raucous and boisterous din associated with a World Cup soccer game…” isn’t traditionally part of our thanksgiving or our worship. “Let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation,” calls us to examine why.
We can speculate. The CRC came out of the Dutch heritage and the Dutch are known for much that is admirable but we are not known for our outward displays of emotions. Brazilians are. Italians are. That doesn’t make them better cultures. It’s simply to say that every culture has its own makeup with strengths and weaknesses. Culturally, Brazilians and Italians would find verse 1 much more natural than the Dutch, “let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.”
Now the Dutch Reformed tradition has added a lot to the church as a whole. It has always punched well above its weight in terms of theologians and influence, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t places we can grow too. Growing involves keeping the commandments of God; that brings us back to verse 1, “let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.” That is part of worship.
Excitement is part of worship. Emotions are part of worship. So Jenner, I want you to imagine that you are watching your beloved Bengals. Now they’ve currently got a winning season, but I want you to imagine that they’ve made it all the way to the conference championship. They are down by three and with two seconds left they score a touchdown sending them to the Superbowl. Now, with put yourself there emotionally and give us a shout of thanksgiving.
Now is that level of excitement appropriate when it comes to God? “Let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation,” says that it is. That’s a reminder for each of us to take all of ourselves—including our emotions—into this sanctuary on Thanksgiving Day and to always take our emotions into worship. Showing emotion might be a bit uncomfortable for us but it is certainly what God invites in worship. Psalm 47:1, “Clap your hands, all you nations; shout to God with cries of joy.” Psalm 39:12, “Hear my prayer, Lord, listen to my cry for help; do not be deaf to my weeping.” Psalm 126:2, “Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy.” Shouting, crying, weeping, laughing. It seems that all of this is proper in the worship of God. It seems all of this is proper today. We want to seek the Spirit. That’s part of our vision statement. Seeking the Spirit will bring us to emotional places.
Now we need not fear what others might think of us if we sing loudly, cry, or laugh with delight. David was corrected by his wife after he displayed too much emotion in worship. She told him that everyone thought he looked like a fool. He told her that his worship wasn’t about her. It was about the Lord. He said, “I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this.” David’s wife tried to shut down his emotions in worship. The Lord shut her womb from that day on. The Lord takes all of you who are that seriously. He takes connecting with all of who you are that seriously. That’s the sort of seriousness that’s appropriate for gathered worship. Excluding emotion is the opposite of that.
Now, the first reason for shouting thanks is given in verse 3. It has to do with God’s greatness; “For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. In His hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to Him. The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land.”
Now God’s greatness is obvious when we think about Him creating everything, but His greatness isn’t usually obvious to us on a random Sunday. However, this greatness wasn’t always obvious to Israel. Imagine saying the words of verse 3 in slavery in Egypt, “For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods,” or during the days of the judges, “For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods,’ or when the Philistines reigned or when the Assyrians invaded or when during the Babylonian exile. Imagine them on the lips of Jesus under the shadow of the Roman empire, “For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods.”
We worship a great God, but that greatness is rarely obvious to us. It has always taken faith to say, “For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods.” It has always taken faith to say, “the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord,” as Job did. It has always taken faith to affirm the goodness and greatness of God when trouble is all you can see. Affirming that goodness and greatness, however, is part of shouting thanksgiving. It is part of emotional worship.
So, offer your thanksgivings with all you are. Offer them even if it’s by faith and not sight. Don’t be afraid to get choked up. Don’t be afraid to say this last year was tragedy upon tragedy but you are holding on by a thin thread, but you know that thin thread will hold because it’s connected to God. Always bring your emotions with you. Emotions are part of the worship. Outward expressions are also part of worship. We see that in our second point: outward expressions.
This second half of the Psalm begins with another invitation to worship; verse 6, “Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, the flock under His care.” Now it isn’t the emotions that are the focus but the outward expressions. Here we see the expression of bowing.
Now bowing makes us uncomfortable because it is so self-humbling. It is so vulnerable. What we need to remember, however, is that vulnerable, self-humbling is always part of giving thanks. Imagine a father of six who is struggling terribly to make ends meet. He truly has tried to be responsible but lately it’s seemed that everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. He hates asking his own father for money. He feels so little. One day, though his dad says, “your mom and I just sold some of your late uncle’s property and we want you to have some of the proceeds.” Now that man’s dad knew what his son needed that money the son knew that he knew. The son gets choked up, “thanks dad. It’s been a bad year.” “I know.” That’s the end of it. Genuine thanksgiving always has that vulnerable, self-humbling aspect to it because you are giving thanks for what you could not do for yourself. That’s part of “come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, the flock under His care.”
Now the opposite of vulnerable, self-humbling is being stiff-necked. The opposite of bowing your neck is being stiff-necked. Stiff-necked people will not bow. Their necks are stiff. That’s their defining characteristic. The wilderness generation was stiff-necked. That’s what’s going on with verse 7, “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me though they had seen what I did.”
Meribah and Massah are two names for the same wilderness location. This is where the Israelites quarreled with God over food and water. Moses named the place Meribah, which means quarrelling. He also named the place Massah, which means testing. He did so as a warning to future generations not to be stiff-necked by quarrelling with God and testing Him.
The people quarreled with God and tested Him by grumbling against Him. That’s the opposite of thanksgiving. That’s the opposite of gratitude. That’s why Meribah and Massah are in this Psalm of thanksgiving.
Grumbling and gratitude cannot coexist. Grumbling and gratitude to be like two boys who refuse to be in the same room together. When grumbling enters a room, gratitude runs out. When gratitude shows up, grumbling takes off. That’s why the best way to get rid of your grumbling is to be grateful. That’s the idea behind the song, “count your many blessings, name them one by one.”
Now God takes grumbling very seriously because He takes it as a criticism of Him, which is certainly is. When we grumble about life, we criticize God’s performance in our lives. We grumble about the job where He currently has us. We grumble about the friends that He’s provided. God is not sympathetic with our grumbling against what He’s provided. He wasn’t sympathetic with Israel grumbling over basic needs like food and drink. How often do we grumble about far less essential matters? We grumble against a new coworker or our kid’s coach as if this person isn’t there by God’s plan. Jesus didn’t grumble about what His Father provided. From time to time, it’s good to imagine Jesus on the cross and us pulling up a step ladder so that we can tell him clearly just how bad we have it. That would sober us up a bit.
Grumbling provokes God. Ingratitude provokes God. Thanksgiving is always in season. Ingratitude to God for what He has provided is what’s behind verse 10, “For forty years I was angry with that generation.” That isn’t saying that God decided to be ticked off for forty straight years because His feelings got hurt. It’s saying that the people continually provoked Him by ingratitude after ingratitude for forty years.
Now not everything was perfect in the wilderness, but ingratitude and grumbling was not the way forward and it never is when things aren’t perfect. That’s why I asked for the 1929 Thanksgiving Proclamation to be read. This is a question for any history buffs out there. What huge event began in 1929? The stock market crash that began the Great Depression happened in the fall of 1929. The devastation was obvious by Thanksgiving that year, but the Thanksgiving proclamation wasn’t filled with ingratitude and grumbling. That’s not to say the president wasn’t doing what he could. It’s to say that he knew grumbling was not the way forward. It would only make the situation worse.
Grumbling did make the situation worse for Israel. Look at verse 10, ‘I said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways.”’ God said the people had wandered from Him in their hearts. Now, here’s another question for congregation participation, what did God make the people do in the wilderness for forty years? He made them wander. He made their outward experience match their inner bent. God brings consequences for grumbling against what He’s provided. He often makes life more difficult until we learn to be grateful for what He has provided. Thanksgiving is always in season.
Thanksgiving is the antidote. Gratitude is the antidote. It is an attractive alternative in a grumbling world. ‘“Do everything without grumbling or arguing,” Paul told the church, “so that you may become blameless and pure children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation. Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life.”’
Paul was saying that gratitude is always winsome. Thanksgiving is always attractive. It expands the soul. Ingratitude to what God has provided shrinks it. You will sense the winsomeness of gratitude to God when people share their thanksgivings to God. “You catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than with a gallon of vinegar.” You certainly catch more of God with a spoonful of thanksgiving than with a gallon of grumbling against what He’s brought into your life for reasons that He only knows. So, let’s not let Thanksgiving end at 11:59 tonight. It’s always in season. Amen.