Thanksgiving sermon for MHBC (24 November 2021). You can listen on Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, or our website. Also available as a podcast here or by searching “Monument Heights Baptist Church” in your favorite podcast app.
If you were to attend the morning prayer service at an Anglican church for several weeks, you would grow familiar with Psalm 95, for every single morning it is part of the liturgy. This has been the case for at least four centuries.
What is it about Psalm 95 that makes it essential enough to repeat every morning? As all the psalms do in those traditions that centralize the psalms, Psalm 95 has a name. Its name, like the rest, comes from the first line: “Come, let us exalt the Lord.” The psalm calls us to adore God so that our hearts would not be hardened in rebellion against him.
I may surprise you, but I find most talk of God in the public space cringeworthy. I don’t always celebrate when someone invokes the word “god.” Often, such talk is vague, shallow, and meaningless. It’s generically spiritual. Put another way, it has no bite. It’s like a dull knife. And at Thanksgiving such talk is more common. “Thank God for our blessings.” Could anything possibly be more bland? It is like giving a gift with no heart.
So, here is what I propose. I propose that we turn to Psalm 95 for instruction in thanksgiving. We ask: What does it mean to give thanks? How can we sharpen our thanksgiving in a way that is consistent with the unique confession of Christianity? Or to say it differently, how do Christians, who believe God took on flesh to redeem humans from sin, Satan, and death, give thanks tomorrow and every day?
Psalm 95 has a straightforward structure. In vv. 1 and 6 there is a summons to come and worship, celebrate, adore, delight in the Lord.
So, we have the twofold summons to worship. In each case, the psalmist tells us why the Lord is worthy of our delight and celebration. Notice the word “for” in v. 3 and in v. 7.
But there’s a third element. While we are summoned to worship, we are also warned that worship does not come naturally. In fact, we must be warned because our hearts can be hardened, and hardened hearts don’t worship the Lord.
Let’s take a look at the passage and just make a few brief points.
First, notice the context of worship. Verse 1:* “Come let us sing to the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving. Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise.” Did you catch it? The worship we are called to is not merely private but public. It is worship to be shared with God’s people. We could say the same about vv. 6–7. Worship of God is the bedrock of our shared life as the people of God.
Second, notice the reasons for worship. Why is God worthy of such worship? Verse 3.* “For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.” One reason is that he is utterly unique. There’s no possible comparison. The very best things in the universe look completely inferior before him. He is above all. He is sovereign over all. That’s why he’s called a king. That’s also the rationale behind vv. 4–5.* This is a literary technique. The depths and heights. The sea and dry land. We do this when we say young and old or great and small. It’s a way of saying everything—the extreme ends of the spectrum—falls under the jurisdiction of God. I should also say that the depths in the Ancient Near East referred to the realm where evil lurked. It was the place to be feared. But notice these, too, are in the sovereign King’s hands like in Genesis 1 when the Spirit hovers over the face of the deep.
Another reason God is worthy of worship is that he is the life giver. Look at v. 6.* “Our Maker.” In the Christian worldview, there is God and there is creation. God is not part of that creation. He is eternal, having no beginning or end, not being subject to time. After all, he creates time and space. He designs all of creation and he is our maker. The proper response here is to feel impossibly small. Humans like to believe we are in far more control than we are, but remember what Isaiah says about us. We are like grasshoppers before the living God.
And despite our insignificance by comparison, the Lord is worthy of worship because he is an adopting Father. Look at v. 7a.* As Christians, we must read every part of our Bible with an eye for Christ, and here is the work of Christ. God creates the world and he places mankind in that world as representatives of him. They bear his image. They are to cultivate and care for the world. But instead, they rebel, desiring to be God themselves, and the image of God is distorted. But in his kingly freedom, God unilaterally sets forth a plan that was determined in eternity past. Eternal God steps into time and space in the person of Jesus to redeem a people for himself. People who had no claim to God are now called the children of God, people who once were not a people are now identified as the people of God. This mighty, beautiful, untouchable, sovereign, creator God, has set his affections on grasshoppers. He acts to redeem his creation that has been hijacked by sin. In Christ’s death and resurrection, he acts decisively to set creation free from sin, Satan, and death. And now he is calling a people out of darkness and into light, lavishing on them grace upon grace, making known his wisdom to the powers and the authorities in the unseen realms.
But there’s a warning, and it’s the final point: the barrier to worship. Begin with me at the end of v. 7.* Do you remember the story? The Lord freed Israel from Egypt. He leads them out of captivity. He nourishes them as a shepherd in the wilderness. And yet, they grumble, desiring the comforts of Egypt, desiring captivity rather than the provision of their God. Despite the work of God, they challenge his goodness, his authority, his ability. They didn’t know his ways v. 10 says. Put another way, their understanding of him was about an inch deep. They don’t know the Lord. And they don’t do what the first half of the psalm calls us to do: Worship and delight in him. And because they don’t, they don’t enter into his rest.
The tendency to rebel must be vigilantly watched. Now, we may think this point doesn’t apply to us, because we are at a Thanksgiving church service on a Wednesday evening. But don’t make that mistake. Who rebelled? The ones who had been set free from Egypt. It is imperative, then, that we recognize that we can fall into the same error. We easily fool ourselves with ritual, tradition, and religion. These things, if we pay attention, are remarkably shallow. Thank you, God, for your blessings. Forgive us for our sins. There’s no reflection on God’s character, other than we like the idea that he gives us stuff and there’s no reflection on the meaning of the cross that not only secures forgiveness once and for all, it liberates us from the inescapable slavery of sin.
And here’s where the mistake lies. It lies in confusing the gifts and the blessings with the Giver and only Blessed One. It is the mistake of Israel. They had seen the work of God, but their hearts went astray because they desired the gifts more than the Giver, the creation more than the Creator. Now, this is a perennial problem of Christians in America and we are especially prone to it at our holidays when we rightly thank God, but often more out of a love for the gifts than the Giver.
What is the corrective? The psalm tells us. Real thanksgiving, then, is the heartfelt worship and delight that arises from exalting God’s character and his work in the world, especially his redeeming action in Christ. So, rather than generically thanking God for blessings this holiday, consider spending a few moments exalting his unparalleled character, his power, his sovereignty; consider his work in Christ to redeem creation from the curse of sin. Don’t confuse the blessings for the real object of thanksgiving. The late theologian John Webster once said: “What draws forth the movement of worship? God himself. What evokes the intensity of worship? Again: God himself.” The object of our delight, wonder, adoration, and worship must be God in his splendid character. Come, let us worship the Lord.