Four Portraits of the Thankful Redeemed B

Folks, we're called to thanks in this incredible psalm because we are these people. We are the wanderers. We are the prisoners. We are the sick. We're the sailors.

We've been rescued. And the only appropriate response is to give thanks. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. So what have you been thankful for this year?

Maybe that's hard to answer. You may have faced a lot of difficulties in recent months, but as you'll hear in today's broadcast, your earthly condition should never dictate how thankful you are. As John MacArthur shows you four portraits of the thankful redeemed, you'll learn how to praise God in any circumstance. Before the lesson, there's something we can't say often enough, and that is thank you to the people who run this radio station. John, I know these people are dear to you, not just at Thanksgiving, but all year long. And for listeners who are benefiting from hearing grace to you on this station, I know there is a favor you'd like to ask of them. Yeah, and I'm very serious about this because the favor I want to ask of you is to reach out and say thank you to the people at this radio station that you're listening to. Obviously, we're happy when people call and write grace to you or when they go to the website and interact there.

But we also understand very well that this is a partnership that involves very, very dedicated people in the radio side, and they are in every sense our ally. And it would be wonderful for you to let them know how much the Christian radio station means to you. What you hear every day on grace to you runs counter to what you're going to hear on basically all other media.

And I think you know that. In the age of outright lies and deception, we're all about the truth, and this Christian radio station is all about the truth. And as a listener, you shouldn't take for granted the privilege you have to hear teaching from the Word of God on this station.

And as the lies become more dominant and more complex, running to find the truth is more dramatically attractive to people in this culture, even non-believing people. So the fact that you have a station that upholds the Word of God in the midst of all the lies in our world should cause you to be profoundly grateful. You can express that gratitude to them personally, give them a call, write them a letter—any kind of feedback like that is very, very helpful. And it lets the radio station know that we at Grace To You are grateful that they're partnering with us. We wouldn't be able to reach you if it weren't for them, so let them know.

Yes, friend, do let them know. Thank the team at this radio station for airing Bible-teaching programs like Grace To You. That's a big help to them and to us. And now to show you some important reasons for giving thanks, here's John with today's lesson. Well, let's open our Bibles back to Psalm 107.

Oh, give thanks to the Lord for He is good for His loving kindness, which is an Old Testament word that sort of combines grace and mercy, is everlasting. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom He has redeemed from the hand of the adversary and gathered from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. There is that opening direct call to give thanks to God.

After then, that opening call of those three verses, the Psalm gets very interesting. There are four illustrations of God's redemption...four illustrations of God's redemption. First, God's redemption is like a lost caravan being led to a safe city. God's redemption is like a captive prisoner in a dungeon waiting execution, being set free. God's redemption is like a sick person with no appetite on the brink of death recovering full health.

And God's redemption is like a doomed sailor being rescued from a life-threatening storm. Those are the four magnificent pictures that are given here to illustrate God's redemption. Each of them is poignant.

Each of them is graphic. Each of them is an analogy illustrating the blessedness of God's redemption, how He rescues sinners out of dire circumstances. Now each of the four illustrations has four parts.

And we're going to take the same little four-part outline to unfold each. First of all is the predicament and that describes the situation they were in. Secondly, the petition, that's the cry for deliverance that came from them. Thirdly, the pardon, the merciful redemption that God granted. And fourthly, the praise...predicament, petition, pardon, praise.

Just those four will unfold each illustration. The second illustration is locked in a prison, lost in a wilderness and locked in a prison, verses 10 to 16. If the word restless marks the first illustration, the word miserable marks this one.

This is misery. The predicament in verses 10 to 12, there were those who dwelled in darkness and in the shadow of death, prisoners in misery and chains. What you have here is someone in a dungeon on death row waiting imminent execution.

It is pitch black dark. They're in the very shadow of death which means their execution is looming near. They are in chains and the consequent misery and filth of that condition is depicted.

And people in ancient times knew well what horrors that kind of imprisonment produced. Why are they there, verse 11? Because they had rebelled against the words of God and spurned the counsel of the Most High. Therefore He humbled their heart with labor. They stumbled and there was none to help.

The predicament could speak of Israel being in Egypt. They stumbled. They had to make bricks.

They had to make bricks without straw. It was hard, hard labor. It was a kind of darkness. It was definitely the shadow of death.

Even the angel of death came. They were prisoners in a foreign land. They had a miserable kind of existence as slaves in Egypt. But beyond that, this is the illustration of any sinner who was in the misery of the dungeon of his own making, who himself has rebelled against God, disobeyed God's Word, disregarded God's Word, found life to be hard, found himself stumbling and falling and helpless and dark, all that slavery, servitude and a dungeon existence could bring about the sinner experiences spiritually. He is chained to his own iniquities. He is sort of sitting and wallowing in his own filth. He is in the darkness with no hope of light and life is very, very hard.

When he does work, it's just hard labor without help. Any man who rejects God is going to find that's how life is. And even though he may try to overcome his misery by sort of gritting his teeth and getting a firm grip on life and doing it his way and trying to master life and cram it with numbing experiences that sort of take away the pain of its hardness and failure, can't be done...can't be done.

Adam and all his posterity have rebelled against God and His Word. The whole race is imprisoned in a dungeon of darkness, sitting in its own filth. Life is hard.

Life is unfulfilling. All of Satan's pledges and promises are only lies and they only afflict sinners with more cruelty and pain. The soul of sinners then is confined to the prison of iniquity, guilt and dissatisfaction, bound with chains too strong to be broken and living in total darkness. Sinners are confined then to the deepening misery of their own lust and their own passion which becomes like so many tormentors, inflicting them even more. And all they can look forward to is execution. In that condition, we come in verse 13 to the petition and this is where we all had to come, then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble.

Somebody might say, well it's probably a hopeless cry if you've lived your life like that. If you've been a rebel against God, if you've been wandering in the wilderness of sin, what use to cry out to God? But Israel cried to God for deliverance and it came.

And they went back and rebuilt their land. And when the imprisoned sinner is so humbled and so recognizes his own filth that he pleads with God for deliverance because there's nowhere else to turn, then comes number three, the pardon. Verse 13 again, He saved them out of their distresses.

He brought them out of darkness in the shadow of death and broke their bands apart. This is grace, folks. This is absolute pure grace. There's nothing achieved here.

There's nothing offered except the wreckage of life. This is grace at its most graphic. This is loving kindness which is grace. The sinner's chains like Peter's fell off at the Word of the Redeemer and he's brought into the light, not because of anything he's done, but in spite of everything he's done. Charles Wesley said he breaks the power of canceled sin and sets the prisoner free.

Suddenly and instantaneously he is freed. Isaiah saw this, Isaiah chapter 42. It is the Lord, the God who created the heavens and stretched them out, the one who spread out the earth and its offspring, the one who gives breath to the people in it and spirit to those who walk in it. I am the Lord. I've called you in righteousness.

I will also hold you by the hand and watch over you. I will appoint you a covenant to the people, a light to the nations. Verse 7, Isaiah 42, to open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the dungeon and those who dwell in darkness from the prison. God delights in setting the people in the dungeons free. Isaiah 45, 1, it is God who opens doors. Verse 2, it is God who goes before and makes rough places smooth.

It is God who shatters the doors of bronze and cuts through iron bars. God loves to set sinners free from their prisons and He does it suddenly and instantaneously just because they ask. What do you tell a sinner who is at this point? Cry out to God and ask for redemption.

Ask Him to forgive your sin. Jesus said, "'Him that comes to Me all in no wise cast out.'" He hears the cry of the desperate sinner. And that leads us to the fourth point in the second illustration and it means that such deliverance brings an obligation. The obligation is praise, verses 15 and 16. Let them give thanks to the Lord for His loving kindness and for His wonders to the sons of men for He has shattered gates of bronze and cut bars of iron asunder.

The only proper response to grace, to grace redemption is thanks. The third illustration, lost in a wilderness, locked in a prison. Thirdly, languishing in a sickness...languishing in a sickness. Verses 17 to 22, another picture of lostness is the picture of a person who is sick and depressed. The predicament, verse 17 and 18, fools because of their rebellious way...again there's always culpability, there's a reason why people are in this condition, it's because they rebel against God...and because of their iniquities were afflicted.

That's the consequence of sin. They were so afflicted, here's the severity, their soul abhorred all kinds of food and they drew near to the gates of death. I have been at the bedside of a number of people recently who have died of cancer and one of the characteristics of near death is disdain for any food. They begin to have no appetite and perhaps for days or certainly for hours and sometimes even weeks they refuse to eat. This is the severity of their illness. Severe near-death illness results in a loss of appetite and that's what he's picturing here. The predicament is Israel is like a sick person with a fatal disease in their Babylonian captivity and redemption would be like some kind of healing, but they've lost all hope, they've lost all appetite. They don't want to eat.

They don't even want the very food that could give them life and sustain them. Sickness then pictured as so severe that there is a loss of appetite and nearness to death. Israel in Babylon was like that, languishing in sickness, near extinction, near to be obliterated, wiped out with absolutely no appetite for the very godly things in some ways that could have rescued them. It's reminiscent of Numbers 21. You can read it yourself, verses 4 through 9, the story of the serpent, Moses making a bronze serpent and the people who were sick could look up to the serpent and be healed.

Of course, a picture of Jesus Christ. This is the same kind of desperate sickness that they had experienced back in Numbers 21. The imagery also has, of course, application beyond Israel. Sinners are sick and sinners have a deadly incurable ailment. And some of them have lost all interest in what is true and what is right and what is good, what could be the food to sustain their life. They're hopeless and they're on the brink of death. There's a consequent loss of appetite for life or anything else. There's a consequent depression, probably the reason so many people commit suicide. They are void of any appreciation for anything.

Life becomes jaded and bizarre. You see it in the youth culture of today and these many people who kill themselves. They're so depressed, so neurotic, so unfulfilled, so unable to handle life with its anxieties and its guilt that there's just no peace for the wicked, Isaiah 48.22 says, and they hate the only food that can save them. And once they've denounced all the people helpers, all the physicians and all the psychiatrists and all the psychologists, they're hopeless. So sinners are like lost wanderers, restless and aimless. They're like prisoners chained and held in dungeons, waiting death. They're like depressed neurotics who can't cope and in each case death is imminent. But some sinners in the throes of the horrors of this sickness make a petition, verse 19, then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble.

Remember they were rebellious, they were iniquitous, they were fools and now they're in desperate condition and they cried out to the Lord in their trouble. Somebody might say, that's not fair. You're right.

That's not fair. That's grace. That's grace. They cried out and the third point, pardon, came. Verse 19, He saved them out of their distresses.

It says that every time. It doesn't give any qualifications, it just says He delivered them out of their distresses. He saved them out of their distresses. Why? Because they...what?...asked.

You understand that? That's grace. Because they asked, not because they did anything else, they just asked. They cried out in desperation. And when the sinner realizes he's lost and starving, and when the sinner realizes he's bound in a dungeon and doomed to execution, and when a sinner realizes he has a fatal disease from which there is no cure, that level of desperation produces the petition that brings the pardon. Sinners, sick with their guilt, sick with their anxiety, listless, depressed and troubled without an appetite for divine food and having no inclination even for virtue, nauseated by the Scripture, nauseated by the bread of life may still call on the great physician, the restorer and the Redeemer who will come to them and intervene with full healing. All these sinners are sick but they were healed by grace and that leads to point 4, the obligation. Verse 21, let them give thanks to the Lord for His loving kindness and for His wonders, wonderful acts to the sons of men. Let them also offer sacrifices of thanksgiving and tell of His works with joyful singing. That's what we do when we come together to worship.

You understand that? Some people don't understand what the church is. It's a group of redeemed sinners that gather together to thank God for their redemption. It's what we are, it's what we do, to praise Him, to offer sacrifices of thanksgiving, to tell of His works with joyful singing, His wonders to the sons of men.

And so praise is the right response to the goodness of God. Lost in a wilderness, locked in a prison, languished in a sickness, that's us. And finally, life threatened in a storm. We were also not only like lost people in a caravan and prisoners in a dungeon and sick people on a deathbed, but we're like sailors in the midst of a deadly storm. Restless, yes. Miserable, yes.

Sick, yes. And here, fearful, frightened, terrified. This last illustration portrays the terrors of sinners as they really understand their condition. Some just drown, but some sinners get a grip on their condition. By the mercy of God, they're brought to understand it.

Look at their predicament in verses 23 to 27. Those who go down to the sea in ships who do business on great waters, they have seen the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep. Talking about the ocean here. People who do their business on the sea, who travel all the time on the kind of ships in the ancient world that were so frail, do their business on great waters.

They know what it's like. Verse 25, they've seen the works of the Lord for He spoke and raised up a stormy wind. They knew what it was to be in a stormy wind which lifted up the waves of the sea. They rose up to the heavens, they went down to the depths, their soul melted away in their misery. They reeled and staggered like a drunken man and were at their wits end. That simply means they had nowhere to go.

There was no solution. They were at the end of any wise response. All their wisdom literally was swallowed up, certainly for the sinner. Every sinner living apart from God is in a storm-tossed sea of terror without hope. The world, in fact, is a sea to sinners and it's a troubled sea. Temptations, sorrows and sufferings are its waves.

And the prince of the power of the air is its stormy wind. And heaven is its only safe harbor but it can't be reached by all the sailors' efforts. The violence of life, the uncertainty of life pictured as the waves rise to the heavens and sink to the depths, the tremendous rise and fall in this little ship going to the heights and plunging to the depths, the agitations of life, the elevations and depressions of the mind, the impending death can produce terror in the sinner. And the sinner may respond with that petition. Look at it in verse 28. When they've come to the end of their wits, when all wisdom has been swallowed up and there's nowhere to turn, then they cried to the Lord in their trouble.

There it is again. No rescue possible humanly and they called on the Lord and here comes grace again and He brought them out of their distress. Just that matter of fact, just that sudden instantaneous and immediate. He brought them out. He caused the storm to be still so that the waves of the sea were hushed. Then they were glad because they were quiet. So He guided them to their desired haven.

That depicts the rescue. The people in the caravan found the city. The people in prison were set free. The ones who were sick were made whole. The people in the storm were safely led completely out of the storm into a haven from the restless, miserable, sick, fearful lives headed nowhere with no resources hopelessly, aimlessly wandering toward death and hell. God came. We called on Him. He rescued us, restored us, redeemed us.

He led us to a city, a heavenly city, out of prison to freedom from deadly sickness to eternal health, from terror to safety in the harbor of His own glory. And again, what's our obligation? Look at it, the last point, is again, verse 31, let them give thanks to the Lord for His loving kindness and for His wonders to the sons of men.

Same response. Folks, we're called to thanks in this incredible psalm because we are these people. We are these people. We are the wanderers. We are the prisoners. We are the sick. We're the sailors. We've been rescued and the only appropriate response is to give thanks. And verse 32 says this, let them extol Him...here's the sum of it...in the congregation of the people and praise Him at the seed of the elders.

Seed of the elders was the place where the elders taught, the congregation gathered. What he's saying is do that when you come together. That's what we're supposed to be doing. We come together today and we sing, now thank we all our God with heart and soul and voices, right?

That's what we do. That's worship. That's worship. This is a summons to an incessant gratitude for the grace of our salvation. You see the desperation of sinners and we have nothing to commend ourselves with and all we do is cry out and God delivers us.

How can He do it? He can do it because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ who paid for the sins of sinners. And because He took your place and died your death and paid for your sins, God can give you His forgiveness and His deliverance. For those of us who have received that deliverance, this is a call to thanks.

But there are some of you who have not. You're still wandering in the trackless wilderness, hungry and thirsty and perishing. You're still in the darkness of the dungeon waiting execution. You're still on your death bed with a fatal illness. You're still in a life-threatening storm that's going to drown you.

But I have some good news for you. Here is an invitation from the prophet Isaiah that is a good way to finish our message. Isaiah 55, 6 and 7, seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He's near.

Before it's too late, before you've gone under the waves for the last time, before you have lost your way for the last time and have nothing to sustain your life, before you breathe your last breath, before you are taken to the executioner, call upon the Lord while He may be found, while He is near. Let the wicked forsake His way, the way you're going, and the unrighteous man, his thoughts, the way you've ordered your own life and return to the Lord and He will have compassion on Him and return to our God for He will abundantly pardon. That is one of the great invitations of the Scripture.

Most of us have done that. We've come to God and He pardoned all our sin because of what Christ has done for us. So I say to you, let the redeemed of the Lord say thanks. And for those who aren't redeemed, call upon the Lord and be rescued and join us who thank Him for His redemption.

Let's pray together. Father, this is such rich, moving testimony of Your grace. It's so remarkable the simplicity with which the psalmist expresses that You saved them out of all their troubles just because they asked and that's how it still is. If a sinner will come, forsake his sin, his way, his own thoughts, and ask You to save him from his sin and its consequence, You will do it.

Jesus came to seek and save sinners, seek and save what was lost. Father, we pray that sinners here who have not cried out to You will see the desperation of their condition. And while You are still near, while You can still be found, they will cry out to You for deliverance, forgiveness, and salvation. We thank You, O God, with all our being for Your great redemption. Thanks be to God.

Thanks be to God. We can say that every waking moment and never fill up the thanks that You ought to receive. Lord, little wonder that You have told us, in everything give thanks. How we fail to be thankful when we have such a great redemption and so undeserved. We bless Your name with thanksgiving.

Amen. It's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, with some vivid pictures of the response we all should have to God's grace. John's lesson today, four portraits of the thankful redeemed, here on Grace To You.

Now friend, back to something John said earlier today. When you can, be sure to thank this radio station for airing Grace To You. And to let us know how God has used Grace To You in your life, drop us a note today. You can send us an email by writing to letters at gty.org. And for regular mail, write to us at Grace To You, P.O.

Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. And thanks for remembering to mention the call letters of this radio station any time you write. Now all this Thanksgiving week, we've aired messages on gratitude and thankfulness. And if you missed one, keep in mind you can hear any of those sermons for free at our website gty.org. In fact, you can download any sermon from John's 54 years in ministry. And if you're not sure where to start listening, log on to Grace Stream. That's a continual broadcast of John's teaching. It begins in Matthew, and it will take you all the way through Revelation, and then it starts over. So whether you have a few minutes or a couple of hours, you will find verse-by-verse encouragement from God's Word.

All of that and more is available at gty.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Remember to watch Grace To You television Sundays on DirecTV channel 378, that's NRB-TV, and make sure you're here tomorrow for our Thanksgiving Day broadcast. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace To You.