Thanksgiving Completes Us

We are turning this morning to Psalm 100, which is a brilliant example of a Psalm of Thanksgiving. And so, obviously, we're pausing our series at the moment, the portraits of the Messiah, to spend some time on the very important topic, which is how to think about thanksgiving. And the topic this morning specifically is the statement that thanksgiving completes us. Thanksgiving completes us. We're going to read from Psalm 100 verse one.

A Psalm for giving thanks, the ESV tells us. And it begins with this word, make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into His presence with singing. Know that the Lord is God.

It is He who made us and we are His. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him. Bless His name.

For the Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever and His faithfulness endures to all generations. This is the word of the Lord. Three headings, three ideas for us to think about as we look at Psalm 100 this morning on the topic of thanksgiving that completes us. The first is that thanksgiving is a response to the truth of who God is to us.

Thanksgiving can be a truth of who God is absolutely, as a concept, as an abstract idea of who God is. But thanksgiving for us is about who God is to us. And we see that with a number of truth claims that are made in this passage, specifically verses three and five. In those verses, verse three, we see this command, know that the Lord, He is God. It is He who made us and we are His.

We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Then we jump down to verse five, another true statement, for the Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever and His faithfulness to all generations. We see a number of statements that are sort of rapid fired at us, about who God is. But I'm going to summarise some of those into three important ideas to know.

Before we can be thankful, these are the things we must know. Firstly, verse three, that He is God. Thanksgiving begins with the knowledge that God is God. It's the main dish in the dinner. It's the turkey at the centre of the table.

The Bible says that the beginning of all wisdom is the fear of God. Beginning of all knowledge, therefore, is the knowing of God. And in order to make any sense of thanksgiving, we must know the one we direct our thanks to. Tim Keller sums up the difference between a feeling of gratitude and genuine thanksgiving. He says, it's one thing to be grateful. It's another thing to give thanks.

Gratitude is what you feel. Thanksgiving is what you do. In other words, gratitude and thankfulness may seem to people like they're the same thing. They're just synonyms of each other. But the difference between them is that gratitude dies with you.

Thanksgiving is directed towards God. Thankfulness is a sense of gratitude expressed. And that expression makes all the difference. Having the knowledge of God, knowing that the Lord, He is God, is knowing the origin of all good gifts. That's what James says, doesn't he, in his letter?

God is the giver of all good things. To know God means we turn feelings of gratitude, and even non-Christians can feel grateful. But it is turning that sense of gratitude into something that kind of matters, which is thanksgiving. It expresses our gratitude. So that's the first thing we must know before we actually are able to give thanks, that God is God.

The second thing, verse three also, is that He made us. He made us. We are not accidents. We were made by God. And so humanity is not a collection of molecules that have been randomly thrown together.

We are knitted together, Psalm 139 says, carefully by God. The you in you is no accident. You were created by God. But then, specifically in Psalm 100, this is a plural you as well. This is a you that encompasses a group of believers.

He has made us. And so it's not simply that my dad has been made by God as an individual, but He has formed the body of believers, Israel, that has been called together to give thanks to God. He has made us as His people. He has brought us together under His name. He has formed us as the church.

At one point, God decisively brought you and I together into this church family, and He made us to be brothers and sisters. And this is marvellous. So not only did God knit us together, our bodies and our personalities, but as a Christian, the truth of Ephesians 1 is also true for us, that you were brought to Him into this people with a thought that came to Him before the foundations of the earth was laid. Like Justine and Logan said, He chose us before time to be His redeemed people. And so you and your life has great significance.

Your life even has glory because God has made you an individual of immense worth and then He has placed you within the family of immense worth. That's why verse three goes on to say that we are His people, the sheep of His pasture. And this is the idea. If we are His people, that's a family term. If you say about other South Africans, they are my people or other Dutchies, they are my people or other Aussies, they are my people, that you're saying, they are my family.

And when we are His people, it's saying that God is our Father. But then, this idea that we are the sheep of His pasture goes even a step further because you can have a good dad who is distant. You can have a good dad that sends you off to boarding school. He's still good, but your relationship with him is distant. But a God who sees us as His sheep is a God who is among His people in the field.

He is the Shepherd. He isn't God from a distance. He is God with us. If we are the sheep in His pasture, then He is the Shepherd who leads us, who protects us, who guides us and we are not by ourselves. And then, in verse five, we get this last sort of truth statement about God that leads to our thanksgiving and that is that God is good and that His steadfast love endures forever.

It endures through all generations. If the first phrase of verse one sets the scene for the universal truth that we should know for us receiving a heart of thankfulness, namely, that God is God. If that is the universal truth of verse one, then the next universal truth, really, in verse five, is the one that's associated with it. It's sort of a bookend, and that is that God is good. God is God and God is good.

For God to only be God and for us not to be assured of His goodness would be to live a terrifying existence. To know that God is all powerful, that He is God, and not to know that He cares about me, and that He is good towards me, is to live a life of fear. But verse five says that He is a good God. And that means that for everything in our life that is worthwhile, all the things that produce deep and lasting joy, these things come to us from God who has created all things to be good. Why can I say this?

Because if God is good, then God embodies all things that are good. God Himself is the barometer of good. In other words, we only know, we can only understand what goodness is because God has created some good in the world. And God only created that good because God Himself desires, loves, cherishes that which is good. Then verse five says, this goodness is exemplified most fully in what is called His steadfast love.

And that in the Hebrew is a very significant term. It's love, loving kindness some translations say. It is this covenantal love, this promised love that God cannot forsake or turn His back on towards His people. His love is steadfast.

It keeps going. Despite my ups and downs, God and His love continues. It doesn't waver. So in verse one and then in the bottom in verse five, we are given truths about God. Sorry.

Verse three and verse five, truths about God which enable us to be thankful and to give us thanks to God. And so that is the foundation, that is the laying of the table that invokes our thanksgiving, to know who God is. Then we come to the second point, and that is how thanksgiving is brought out in us. It's evoked in us, and that is that thanksgiving is spurred on by feelings. Now, that is a dangerous statement to say to the reformed church because we're all saying with our minds, yeah, I consent to this idea.

But thanksgiving is about emotion. It's about how we feel towards God. The degree to which you see the truth of the gospel is the degree to which feelings of thanksgiving arise in your heart. Verse four, the Psalm writer says to God's people, enter His gates with what? Thanksgiving.

Enter His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him and bless His name. Now, remember that the gates and the courts being talked about here is referring to the temple. This was a Psalm that scholars believe was used as part of the pilgrimage of God's people. Every year, every Israelite would need to go to Jerusalem.

This was a song to get everyone riled up to bring their praise to God, to thank Him. And so this is an invitation to walk into the temple courts, to bring your praise to Him. But remember, Old Testament temple had a certain structure to it. It had rules. And one of these rules was that there is a measure of separation between us and God.

Once a year, only once a year, one person in all of Israel was allowed to come into the presence of God in the Holy of Holies. He entered as the high priest behind a thick curtain that separated God's presence, God's glory from the rest of the people, once a year on the day of atonement. Then, outside the Holy of Holies was the inner court, and that was reserved for the Jews. Only the Israelites may go there. And then outside of the inner court was the outer court, and who was allowed there?

Well, everyone, but most especially, gentiles. These gentiles who may have had as much of a faith in the living God, but because of their ethnicity, because of their background, you could only come this close to God. And here is this unqualified, broad, generous invitation to enter the courts, to come into the gates, to praise God. And so Psalm 100, you could almost say now, in the light of the cross is a prophetic Psalm. We read here the invitation of God for people of all backgrounds being invited to come to Him, to give Him thanks out of sincerely grateful hearts.

There's no qualification of who you must be in order to enter the gates. Shout to the Lord, all the earth. Come into the gates. And we know that because of Jesus Christ, we have that access now. In fact, we have more access to God now than the Jews of the Old Testament ever did.

Remember the story of when Jesus died on the cross, that the curtain in the temple was torn from top to bottom. Symbolically, God was saying, His gates have been thrown open. You can come and enter into His presence. Anyone who has an ear to hear, anyone who has a heart willing to respond to the gospel can now be closer to God than we could have ever imagined. Hebrews 10 sums it up for us by saying, therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that He opened for us through the curtain, His flesh.

And since we have Him as a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with hearts sprinkled clean from evil and our bodies washed with pure water. By the power of the purifying work of Jesus Christ, we sinners can come to God. We know that God doesn't dwell in a temple. He dwells inside of all of us in and through the Holy Spirit and we are never, as Christians, without His presence. Every need and every thankful moment can be taken fully and freely to the King of glory.

So you and I, more than the Jews that this was originally written to, can enter the gates of God in praise. And this knowledge produces thanksgiving. And this thanksgiving is spurred on by deep emotion. Christianity without deep emotion is not a Christianity. Whether you are an outwardly emotional person or whether you are more reserved, your thanksgiving is spurred on by feelings of humility, of joy, of absolute exuberance, of peace.

These are all tied with a sense of thanksgiving. And so when we see how loved we really are, how utterly saved and redeemed we really are, how great God's love is continually, feelings of gratitude cannot help but well up inside of us and then drive us towards the object of our thanks. Friends, I want to tell you and I want to encourage you with this knowledge that a heart that is wrapped up in thanksgiving is the most restful heart you can find. A thankful heart isn't trying to prove anything. A thankful heart knows it's not earned anything.

It is just happy to know the one who gave it all. It is the healthiest thing that you and I can have in this life. Do you know that medical research nowadays is actually proving this fact that we've known all along? Here are a couple of things that research recently seems to indicate about thankfulness and how it sort of deals or changes our experience of life. The first thing that we've heard is that thankfulness increases happiness and decreases depression.

Thankfulness does that. Robert Emmons, who is a professor and psychologist at the University of California, is a leading researcher in the area of gratitude. That's his specialty, gratitude in human psychology. His research indicates a link between gratitude and an increase in happiness, and a reduction in depression. He writes, gratitude seems to block toxic emotions such as envy, resentment, regret, and depression, all which destroy happiness.

He adds, it's impossible to feel envious and grateful at the same time. In other words, thankfulness acts as a self defence against the negative thoughts that go hand in hand with mental health conditions. If we wrestle with anxiety, depression, we have to go to thanksgiving. The second thing, which is amazing but it makes a lot of sense, thankfulness gives you better sleep. Research indicates that gratitude is shown to have given improved sleep for seventy six percent of individuals who had insomnia.

So insomniacs, who were taught to be grateful, slept better. Seventy six percent of them did. That's a pretty amazing result. The third thing, thankfulness lowers stress levels. Gratitude has been shown to reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol by 23%.

Chronically high levels of cortisol is generally linked with increased risk of mental illness. But seemingly, when we take the time to stir up emotions of gratitude, stress seems to lower. And if stress levels are lower, people are generally happier as well. So there are three great examples of how God has wired us. That thanksgiving is not simply for the good and proper thing of us to do towards God.

You know, God just deserves the praise, that's just a true statement that we all believe in, thanksgiving changes us. Thanksgiving blesses not only God, it blesses us. The degree to which you see the truth of God and what He has done for you is the degree to which feelings of thanksgiving arise in your heart. And with those feelings in our heart, our life just seems more pleasant. And that brings us to our third and our final point.

That thanksgiving is an active choice that we make. You'll see that the structure of our talk is actually kind of in reverse because we're beginning with verses one and two. But that is because the end is given to us at the beginning. This is what we should do. Give thanks.

Give a joyful noise to our God. The reason we do this is because we need the reasons to give God thanks for. We needed to think about who God is before we come to this point. Verse one and two tells us, make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness.

Come into His presence with singing. Three actions in those verses. Three actions to take to make a joyful noise, to serve the Lord, and to come into His presence. Now, to make a joyful noise is probably as simple as it sounds. It is to verbally, audibly raise your voice to God in joyfulness.

Remember that this was a Psalm of corporate thanksgiving. All the Israelites were called to sing to God in thankfulness. As Christians now, this Psalm also instructs us to regularly raise our voices to God. In other words, we are giving the biblical command here of coming to church, of singing songs to God together as His people. We know over time, for some reason or another, people, churches have been downplaying the corporate meeting of God's people.

Here is an imperative for why we come together. It is to make joyful noises to the Lord together. Many of us here are thankful that we only need to make a joyful noise, not a pleasant one. But this is the reason why it's important to come to church every week because you are told to give your voices to God in praise. It's a joyful action which is an action of rowdy exuberance.

Joyful explosion. It is almost scandalously undignified. Just a noise of happiness. Secondly, we are to serve the Lord, verse two. Now, in the Old Testament Hebrew, to worship God and to serve God is the same word.

To worship is to serve. To serve is to worship. In our English word, the word to serve has more the meaning of doing work, of attending towards someone, of waiting on them and their needs. Now you can make a case that that is very much the biblical understanding of service and worship as well. But again, in the context here of corporate worship of God in Psalm 100, there's this amazing idea that our service is not only to run a soup kitchen.

Our service to God is not simply to evangelise our friends and our relatives. Serving God is to sing praises to Him. Serving God is to worship Him with your brothers and your sisters. And that changes our understanding again of why we come to church on Sundays. Now, obviously, our service of God is more than corporate worship of Him, but it is definitely not less.

And it is good for us to remember that the simple coming together of God's people in worship is an important moment of serving God. And so when we come to church, we come and we serve Him and notice the attitude that we are to do this with, it is with gladness. Serve the Lord with gladness. And so again, just practically, we must come here on Sunday mornings with prepared hearts. For some of us, that can happen in the mornings, in the car ride here, we can put on some worship songs and we can sing to God, and we just prepare our hearts. For young families, that's very difficult.

Those car trips are not fun. They are not quiet. They are not reflective. Maybe you reflect on some thoughts, but they're usually bad thoughts. Make time before Sunday morning, the service, before they wake up to reflect, to think about, to list the things that you can be thankful for.

And so when we come together, we come with gladness. We come with prepared hearts to bring our worship to Him. And then thirdly and very quickly, we are told to come into His presence with singing. Now again, this is just reemphasising what has been said, we come to God joyfully, but this aspect of coming into His presence highlights the fact that we don't come to church on a Sunday to shout things into the air. We come together to be in the presence of God, and the promise of Scripture is that God's presence is with His church, especially when we meet together as brothers and sisters.

Jesus famously said, where two or three are gathered in My name, I am there. The idea is that God, through His Spirit, is with us in a way that He is not when you have your quiet time at home. God is tangibly present with us this morning. Friends, God is here now with us. And so Psalm 100 gives us three actions to take in order to move to that life of thanksgiving.

It is to make a joyful noise to the Lord, to serve the Lord with gladness and to come into His presence. To live with thanksgiving means we have actions to complete, choices to make about how we live. Thanksgiving is an active choice that we make. And so friends, make that choice. Please.

Today, choose to pursue gratitude and a habit of giving thanks. Today, you're being told that your life will not be as sweet, your existence not as pleasant until you worship God as God, and to know Him, and to respond to Him out of thanks. Thankfulness is central to our existence as human beings. When C.S. Lewis reflected on the essence of the Psalms, he had a realisation that makes so much sense that our thanksgiving completes us. Our thanksgiving completes us.

This is what he wrote. I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses, but it completes the enjoyment. It is not out of compliment that people in love keep on telling one another how beautiful they are. The delight is incomplete until it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is.

It is frustrating to come suddenly at the turn of a road to some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur, and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than a tin can in the ditch. It is frustrating to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. He says, the Westminster Catechism says that man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Then he says, we shall then know that these two things are the same thing. Fully to enjoy God is to fully glorify Him.

In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him. Thanksgiving is a response to the truth of who God is for us. Thanksgiving is spurred on by real feelings, real emotions. And we go home this morning with this last point, that thanksgiving is an active choice that we must make. And it changes our entire experience of life.

May God give us hearts that thank Him. May we be encouraged to pursue thankfulness in every area of our life. And so it is right and good for us that we pray now and we give God thanks.