Grateful Praise (Psalm 135)

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Good evening. Go and open your Bibles to Psalm 135 that’s what we’re going to be tonight in Psalm 135 and earlier this year, I was having a pretty rough time with things, so there was a few terrible weeks in a row. So I decided go to the man who has every answer – Pastor Kyle, so I asked Kyle, I’m just having a rough go with things right now. What should I do? What is your advice? And he told me, he gave me some advice. He said, what I want you to do, Jake, is at the end of each day, trying to write down five things that you’re thankful to God for I’m sorry, Carl, I got to admit I was pretty skeptical. I was just not convinced. But I gave it a go. I sat down at the end of that first day, I got my little notebook out, and I was stuck. I just couldn’t think of anything. I couldn’t list one, let alone five, things I was supposed to be thankful for in that day, it was just another terrible day. And yeah, just asking the question like, how do I thank God when I don’t feel particularly thankful for anything? And I imagine that’s not an uncommon feeling. I imagine a lot of people in this room right now that have that same thought every day, or whenever you try to thank God, you can only think of the things, think of the things that you are unthankful for. So what do we do? How do we thank God when we don’t feel especially thankful for anything? I think the word offers a better way. The Psalms, they show us how to thank God properly and how to correct our ungrateful hearts, and then thank God even when it’s hard. So let’s see the better way to be thankful. We’re starting verse one psalm 135 praise the Lord. Praise the name of the Lord. Praise Him. You servants of the Lord, You who minister in the house of the Lord, in the courts of our God. Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good. Sing praise to his name, for that is pleasant. For the Lord has chosen Jacob to be his own Israel, to be his treasured possession. I know the Lord is great, that our Lord is greater than all gods. The Lord does whatever pleases Him, in the heavens and on the earth, in the seas and in all their depths. He makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth. He sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses. He struck down the firstborn of Egypt, the firstborn of people and animals. He sent His signs and wonders into your midst Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his servants. He struck down many nations and killed mighty kings, Sion, king of the Amorites, Og king of Bashan and all the kings of Canaan, and he gave their land as an inheritance, an inheritance to his people Israel. Your name Lord endures forever, your renown Lord through all generations, for the Lord will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants. The idols of the nations are silver and gold made by human hands. They have mouths but cannot speak, eyes but cannot see. They have ears but cannot hear, nor is there breath in their mouths. Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them. All you Israelites, praise the Lord house of Aaron, praise the Lord house of Levi praise the Lord. You who fear Him, praise the Lord. Praise be to the Lord. FROM ZION to him who dwells in Jerusalem. Praise the Lord. Now, this may seem like kind of a weird Thanksgiving Eve passage. There’s a lot of praise in these verses, not a lot of Thanksgiving, except only is actually true. What is Thanksgiving, if not just grateful praise? Thanksgiving is the natural result of us praising God for things that we’re thankful for. So when we learn how we praise God, we actually learn how to show our thankfulness to God. I mean, we just sang a song about this right Lord of all, to thee. We raise this our hymn of grateful praise. So when we learn about praise, we learn about how to show our thanks to God. And these this psalm, we actually see there’s four different things that we need to thank God for. And the first thing is we need to thank God for who he is. The first thing we thank God for is who he is. And look at this first chunk of verses, right? What is the psalmist absolutely fixated on God’s character, who he is. Or see, look in verse three, praise the Lord, for the Lord is good. Verse five, we see, I know that the Lord is great. And then in verses five through seven, we see the psalmist look at nature, and that leads him to praise God. He sees the expanse of the side the skies and the seas. Said Man, our Lord is great. He sees the clouds and hears the crack of lightning and says, Our God is great. He feels the rain and the wind. It says, God is greater than any other God looking at creation, causes the psalmist to thank God, and should do. Same for us, right? I mean, whenever I see stars, that leads me to that. I mean, you can’t see stars in Chicago at all, but when you get out of the city, the sky lights up, and it’s like a beautiful tapestry. And that should lead us to praise God. I know it does for me. I see it and I feel so small, and I’m so thankful that our God is so big and vast. There’s a small glimpse of who he is. And so yeah, creation is one way we can know who God is, but his word is an even better way we can know who God is. His word reveals to us who he is. It’s useful for teaching, right? It teaches us about God and shows us about different parts of His character, His love, His holiness, His goodness, His power. And just think about this past Sunday, right? We heard about Sinai. And how many of you thought man, our God is holy, that we should be thankful that our God is holy. When we hear God’s word, He reveals to us who he is. And so learning more about God, the good, the great creator, can only this grow in love and thankfulness for him. So we need to thank God for who he is. And when we do that, when we thank God for who he is, helps remind us of what he’s done for us. That’s the second thing we see in these verses, is that we need to thank God for what he’s done. Because we see the psalmist thank God for what he’s done for Israel in these next verses, right? We just heard about these stories a few weeks ago, right? He’s talking about the Exodus. About the Exodus, how God brought Israel out of Egypt. He’s talking about how God delivered them out of this place to another place. And it’s very common the book of Psalms. But not only is remembering deliverance out of Egypt into he’s also remembering the deliverance to the promised land, the reward of getting there so and he’s look all the kings that are listed right. Those are kind of the bad neighbors. Those are the old tenants of the promise and that God cleared out to make a way to deliver on his promise that gets people into the promised land. The psalmist is remembering not just what God did for them deliver them from, but also we deliver them to. Shouldn’t our prayers look like this? Shouldn’t we remember God, what God has done in our lives and delivered us from but also delivered us to, and in the same way that God has delivered Israel out of Egypt into the Promised Land, he’s delivered us from the consequence of our sin into the promise of new life through the cross and through his son Jesus. So we need to thank God for our salvation, but also we also need to thank God for the kind of small ways that he’s delivered us as well. When I was in high school, Senior High School, that was when Covid really blew up, and so I wasn’t sure where I was going to go to college. Actually, I had two options. I had Iowa, stay with all my best friends I grew up with. And I had Chicago, which was kind of where I wanted to go more into ministry, but it was a lot of unknowns in Chicago. Was really rough time, 2020, and you guys were here so, you know, but I really didn’t know what to do. So I went to this place in my hometown called Mark Twain Overlook. And I’m kind of a sentimental guy, but you can see the Mississippi River and Illinois, and then my old little, small hometown in Iowa, so I could see where I thought I could go, and the other option where I could go, I just prayed for like, maybe an hour, and I just was like, God, what do you want me to do? And at the end of that, I just felt him saying, you just got to go to Chicago and trust me. And so I went, and that was a really pivotal moment in my life where there was just anything could have happened. It could look so different. And I remember that night often, because I remember all the things that I got when I got to Chicago, I got here, and I learned so much about the Lord. I grew my faith and my love for the Word, so much. I met so many great people, made so many friends. But also I found Cityview, and I’ve met a church family that has loved me so much and so well, and I’ve grown to love so much. Also gotta sit next to a cute girl in class I end up marrying. So when I remember Mark Twain overlook, I just become increasingly thankful for all the things that God did in my life after that, and for him showing me the right way. And so I kind of call that moment in my life a mile marker, moment, just a spot where everything changed and God showed up in a major way. And I believe we all have moments like that, right small ways, or even big ways, that God has shown his hand on our lives and guided us. I think we need to follow the psalmist example here and share those moments with each other, right? That’s what he’s doing. He’s reminding his nation, this is what God delivered us from. This is what he did for us. He’s pointing to the mile markers of Egypt and the Red Sea and the promised land and saying, Remember, what God did we be thankful for that, and we too should do the same thing. We either share and hear the mile marker stories that we all have in our own lives. Why? Because it leads us to share in grateful praise with each other, to remember what he’s done in all of our lives. It’s not bragging. It’s helped us all praise our God to. Together, and maybe you don’t believe you have a story like that, like the Exodus or Mark Twain overlooked story. I’ll push back on that. I think you do. You just have to think a little harder. But even if you can’t think of a story like that, I know for a fact that anyone here that follows Jesus has the mile marker story The cross is the ultimate mile marker story, right? That’s the point in my life. At this point, I was dead, I was broken, I was dead in my sin, and then I met Jesus, and everything changed from that point on, the cross is the ultimate mile marker of deliverance, and we need to be sharing those stories that we have of victories of salvation and sanctification, moments we got to share. This was like I was broken. I was trapped in addiction, I was lost, I was dead, and then I met Jesus. I became whole, I became free, I became found, I became alive. We need to hear those stories from each other, and maybe you’re here and you want that moment you feel broken, trapped in addiction, lost, dead. Tonight can be your mile marker. Tonight can be the night that you look back on for the rest of your life and recognize that’s when I met Jesus, and everything changed forever. It could be tonight. So we need to thank God for what He has done. We need to thank him for those mile marker moments and for the the mile marker moment at the cross, and we need to share those moments with each other. But what about the stuff that God hasn’t done yet, the future, his promises. Well, that’s the third thing we gotta thank him for. We gotta thank Him for what He will do. So we see in the verses 13 through 14, right? We talk about how the Lord will vindicate his people. He will have compassion on them. That is a really great encouragement, right? If you don’t know the word vindication means to prove right or be justified. And we see the promise of that. And this verse says that he will prove, God will prove to his servants that he’s worth it, he’s worth following. And the reason is that God is forever. He’s already shown that he’s worth following, right? There was a point in the life of God’s people, that the Exodus and the promised land were just that they were promises. When the psalmist is writing this, Jesus’s life and death and the cross and his resurrection, those were promises, but all of those came true. So God is worth following and will vindicate his people because he’s done it time and time again. That still doesn’t answer the question, why we should thank God for what he hasn’t done yet? What’s the value in that? Well, thanking God for His promises to come helps us get through trials and suffering in the now, maybe you’re being you’re struggling with being thankful this holiday. Maybe there’s a seat around the table that’s not supposed to be empty, a relationship that hasn’t been whole in such a long time it’s been broken. Maybe there’s some physical ailment that just holds you back and hinders you so much. Maybe there’s not as much food around the table as there was last year. It’s hard to be thankful to God when things seem to be not the way they’re supposed to be. But God has promised that he will vindicate His servants. He will prove that he’s worth it, because there’s promises to come. Jesus promised to wipe away every tear, he’s promised to bind every wound, to make us whole, to heal us. He’s promised coming back. He’s always delivered on his word. So we thank him now for what’s going to come, because it helps us get through what’s hard today. So we need to thank God for who he is, what he’s done and what he’s going to do. The question is, what do we usually thank God for his stuff? Right? The things that he gives us that’s at the top of our list often, right? What do famous athletes do after they win the big game? They, thank God, yeah. What do we do when we get good news from the doctor? We, thank God. What are we all going to do tomorrow before we dig into our big feast of food, we’re going to thank God for the food, and that’s so just maybe this won’t take an audit of your prayer life. Think about what percentage of your prayers is thanking God for stuff. It’s probably a convicting percentage, right? And that’s not entirely wrong. It’s. To thank God for the stuff he gives us, but our hearts kind of twist that in a way. It’s not meant to be. That’s our final point, that we need to thank God for more than just his stuff. Because you get to this last chunk of verses 15 through 21 and it maybe seems a little bit out of place, right, if you look at it, because we have all these verses before. Let’s say Praise the Lord, praise God, praise the Lord, and then we talk about idols. And it seems like it’s in the wrong neighborhood of verses, except it’s not any conversation about praising God. Idolatry is going to come up, because that’s the enemy. That’s the opposition. Look at Verse five, right? Our Lord is greater than all gods. And then verse 15, the idols of the nations are silver and gold. Those are the other gods. That’s what we’re tempted to worship instead of the one true God, the stuff he gives us, that’s what we want. We’re more thankful for. We trust more than him. That’s idolatry, and it’s so dangerous and affects our lives. But what makes idolatry so dangerous? Well, look at verses 16 through 18. Says, idols have the same features as living beings, but they have no breath. There’s no life in them. They aren’t actually alive. Idols are dangerous because they promise life, and they look alive, but they’re not right. Says they have no life. They have mouths, but can’t speak, ears, but can’t hear, eyes, but can’t see, they can’t breathe. It’s almost that same feeling when you recognize an AI generated video or some kind of deep fake right at first, it looks like, well, like, yeah, it looks human. It looks kind of real, and you notice that there’s maybe an extra finger, or, if you actually pay attention, what they’re saying, it actually is nonsense. It’s not even real. We’re just gibberish or just the physics. Don’t look right. It looks real, but doesn’t offer anything real. That’s how idols function. They look real, but they don’t offer anything of value. They don’t offer anything real. And no, maybe we don’t make idols of gold or silver anymore. Sometimes we do, but we definitely trust created things way more than we trust God, right? We trust our finances, our careers, our families, our relationships, our capabilities, our intellects to deliver us from trouble. There’s a problem with that, though, those things, they can’t help us with our biggest problem, death, right? And when we try to trust them to do that, they’re actually gonna make us like them, right? Says they will make us dead because they have no life. Cameraizing The story of Pinocchio, right? If you don’t know, there were these little boys were tricked to go to this island, and they said, You can do whatever you want here. So they went, they went to this island, and they behaved like animals, doing anything they wanted to do. In the end, they became donkeys. They became like their idol. They want to do whatever they want. They act like an animal. They became an animal. We can even see this just in people that are addicted to their phones, right? I’ve seen it sometimes talking to someone that just can’t stop looking at their phone, and I kind of it’s almost an eerie feeling. I feel like their eyes kind of gloss over and their eyes just look like their phone screens. We become like what we worship, right? You it so not only are these idols deadly and they make us dead, they’re also just insulting. It’s like spitting in the face of God to worship idols. I mean, it’s almost as if I married Hannah just to get a nice vacation to Costa Rica and access to her bank account. How much would it really mean? It’s not funny. Like, how much would it really mean if I said, I love you, I swear I love your stuff more, like, That would be absurd. There was no way she could believe that I would love her, right? No way I love you. Hannah, anyway, that’s why we need to root out idols in our heart. They poison our relationship with God and distract us from him. So how do we find those idols? How do we identify those things in our lives that take our trust from God? Good question. I think we already know. I think we already know the thing that keeps us up at night that we are afraid to lose or afraid we’ll never get. I think we already know the thing that we’re willing to skip church for, or the thing that we’re willing to do is spend our time with instead of reading our Bibles or praying. Think we know the thing that we’re willing to sin to get, the things that we spend. In all of our time and money on I think we know these things. Identifying idols is rarely the issue. Surrender. Surrender is the bigger issue, right? Let me ask you this, what if God took away your idols tomorrow, would you be grateful? Thankful? No, you probably be mad, right? And that tightness that holding on to these things that we feel, that’s that reveals the problem these things that have control in our hearts, and they take us from who we’re supposed to belong and worship to, and that’s God. These things, they’re not God. They trick us into thinking they have life. They can never satisfy us the way that he can only He can fulfill us, no relationship, no career, none of those things can satisfy us the way that our God can only God has the words of eternal life. So what do we do with our idols? What does surrender even look like? It can’t be ignoring God’s gifts to us, pretending like he hasn’t given them to us, but involves shifting our focus, focusing more on the giver instead of the gift. Removing idols from our lives looks like focusing on God instead. So instead of just thanking God for the food on your plate, thank him for putting it there instead of thanking God for the promotion you got at work. Thank him from helping you gain favor amongst your peers instead of thanking God for money to make it through the month, thank you for giving you a way to make ends meet, and this will help you remove idols from your life, shifting your gaze from the creation to the Creator, recognizing his role and presence in your life, and that will make you increasingly thankful and less likely to trust in idols instead of him. So we need to focus on God, who God is when we thank him, we need to focus on what he’s done for us. When we thank him, we need to focus on what he’s going to do and we thank him for not just his stuff that he gives us. We need to thank him for being who he is for being God. So what do we do when we don’t feel thankful? The answer is simple, but it’s difficult. We need to remember who he is, what he’s done, what he’s going to do, and focus on thanking him, instead of just focusing on being thankful for him, instead of the stuff that he gives us. And this should just be way more evident to all God’s people on this side of Calvary right in the psalmist, he had the Exodus, we have the cross. He had creation, we have the incarnation. How could we not be thankful for the blood that Jesus spilt on the cross, for his wounds. How could we not be thankful for being freed from death and from sin? How could we not be thankful for undeserved eternal life with Him in glory? How could we not and so when we look at the things that God has made, we wish we had more and we could become ungrateful. But when we gaze at Jesus, at our Savior, we’re just grateful we have him. So I gave it another try. Kyle, I tried again. And you know, some days were easier than others. Some days I’d have maybe one or three things. But you know, eventually I realized that the less I focused on the things that God gave me, and the more I focused on him, I just my list. Couldn’t stop, because even when I had nothing, I still had him. I always had him, and I could always be thankful for him. So remember Jesus, remember the cross and you will become increasingly thankful. Let’s pray.