We're gonna be spending a few moments meditating on Psalm 92. Psalm 92 is a thanksgiving psalm, appropriate for an occasion like tonight. And the intent of this psalm is to increase our gratitude to the Lord for all that he's done. So let's read it together, Psalm 92. A psalm, a song for the Sabbath. It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name almost high, to declare your steadfast love in the morning and your faithfulness by night, to the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre. For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work, that the works of your hands I sing for joy.
How great are your works, O Lord, your thoughts are very deep. The stupid man cannot know, the fool cannot understand this, that though the wicked sprout like grass and all evildoers flourish, they are doomed to destruction forever, that you, O Lord, are on high forever. For behold your enemies, O Lord, for behold your enemies shall perish, all evildoers shall be scattered. But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox, you have poured over me fresh oil.
My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies, my ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants. The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon, they are planted in the house of the Lord, they flourish in the courts of our God, they still bear fruit in old age, they are ever full of sap and green, to declare that the Lord is upright, he is my rock and there is no unrighteousness in him. Let's pray. Father, as we think about the act of giving thanks and about the many reasons for which to give thanks, I pray that you would increase our gratitude to you so that through our gratefulness you might be honored and exalted among men. And Lord, we confess that our thankfulness to you does not match the magnitude of your blessing to us, you are so good to us. Tonight as we look into your word, we ask you to open our eyes to see that goodness in a fresh new way, in an undeniable, unavoidable way. May it increase our gratitude to you, oh gracious God. I pray in Jesus' name, amen. Before we get into Psalm 92 itself, I want us to think for a minute about the concept of giving thanks.
What is thanksgiving? There's an old gospel song that went like this, Lord, I praise you because of who you are, not because of all the mighty things that you have done. Lord, I worship you because of who you are, you're all the reason that I need to voice my praise because of who you are.
Now at the risk of ruining Sandy Patty for you, I understand the sentiment of that song, it's calling us to worship God not just for his blessings alone but for his person, who he is. But there's a false dichotomy I think in that notion that God's nature, his being, who he is, can be separated from his actions, can be separated from what he does. Now it's certainly true of us that there is a distinction between who we are and what we do. Our actions are often not consistent with who we are or who we're supposed to be, who we claim to be. I frequently find that my desires conflict with my mind or that my choices don't reflect the values and the convictions that I claim to hold. But none of those inconsistencies are true of God.
Who he is is always perfectly consistent with what he does. So when we think about thanksgiving, we don't need to think of it as something that's entirely distinct from praise or to think of it as some kind of lower form of worship. It's just as much an act of worship to thank God for his works as it is to praise God for his attributes. In English, we often use the word thanks when someone has done something that benefits us and we want to express our gratitude to them for it. The emphasis is often on our gratitude, our gratefulness. In Hebrew, the emphasis is not primarily on the gratitude of the recipient, but on the character and the generosity of the giver. In fact, the word that's translated as thanks in the Old Testament is a synonym for praise. There's not a huge distinction in Hebrew between praise and thanksgiving.
The Hebrew word for thanks means quite literally to shoot at. When an archer shoots an arrow at a target, where do everybody's eyes go? They go to the target. They want to see where the arrow hit. They're not watching the archer. They're not watching the bow.
They're watching the bullseye. So it is with the idea of thanks in the Old Testament. It has the connotation of giving credit or acknowledgement to someone. When we shoot thanks towards God, we're giving God public recognition for something. We're giving the credit to him in front of everyone. We're openly acknowledging that God is the one who has done this or that. He gets the praise.
He gets the thanks. Praise and thanksgiving, then, are conceptually very similar in meaning in the Psalms. So as we think about giving thanks to God tonight, keep in mind that we're talking about openly acknowledging the wonderful things God has done, and this open acknowledgement is very much an act of praise to God. It's not as if praise is the highest order of worship and thanksgiving is a little more self-oriented or less spiritual. We praise God because of who he is, yes, but we also praise him for what he's done and what he's doing. Now, Psalm 92 is not only a song of thanksgiving.
It's also a song about thanksgiving. It gives thanks to God, but it also tells us why the giving of thanks is important. Notice how the Psalm begins with a statement about the moral value of thanksgiving. It is good to thank the Lord. The psalmist then goes on to tell us why thanking God is a good thing.
It really comes down to this. Giving thanks to God is a good thing because it exalts the Lord and it changes me. It exalts him and it changes me. So let's walk through this Psalm together tonight and consider first the value of giving thanks, then some reasons for giving thanks, and finally the results of giving thanks. First, we see the value of giving thanks in verses one through four. We are by nature slow to acknowledge the benefits and blessings that God sends our way, and so we need to be stirred up to offer thanks. The Psalm highlights the value of thanksgiving by saying it is good to give thanks.
It's a good thing. Thanksgiving has moral value. What is it that makes the giving of thanks a good thing? Well, it's not that it makes God feel needed or significant.
Sometimes we express thanks to another person to kind of boost that person up, to maybe encourage them when they're discouraged, to make them feel like they've contributed something. But when it comes to God, we don't thank him to make him feel important. Our gratitude doesn't add anything to who God already is. Neither do we give thanks in order to merit favor with God.
We're not trying to manipulate him. We don't express gratefulness to him out of fear that if we don't thank him, he'll stop blessing us. God isn't manipulated by our giving of thanks. No, the reason that it's good to thank the Lord is simply because God is worthy of our gratitude.
Thanksgiving is good because Thanksgiving is right. It's the morally right response to divine grace. We begin to get an idea of the moral importance of gratitude when we read verses like Romans 1 21, which is describing reprobates who hate God. It says, for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. You see, intimately connected to esteeming God the way he should be esteemed is the giving of thanks to him for all of his works. When we fail to give thanks to God, we're failing to acknowledge God as the source of every good and perfect gift. Unthankfulness, then, is a character quality that is more consistent with atheism than with those who fear and worship God.
Paul said in 2 Timothy 3 that in the last days, men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, unthankful. And again, the lack of gratitude towards God falls into the category of rebellion against God. God takes thanksgiving very seriously. See, when it comes to our interaction with God, the giving of thanks is not just some sort of social convention like writing a thank you note.
It's not a matter of proper etiquette versus impoliteness. No, thanksgiving is a moral issue, and the failure to be thankful to God is a heart problem that incurs the wrath of God. Thanksgiving is good because it's right, and it's right because it's an acknowledgement that God is God, that God is the source of all things. But that's not the only thing that makes the giving of thanks good.
It's also good because of what it does in me. The giving of thanks changes me. Look at verse four. The psalmist is caught up in expressing his gratitude to God. He's overcome with God's goodness to him, and so he says, you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work.
At the works of your hands, I sing for joy. When we begin contemplating the works of God on our behalf, it has an effect on us. It doesn't change God, it changes us. It puts us in a posture of meditating on the goodness of God towards us, which naturally leads to greater thankfulness, greater joy, deeper contentment in God. John Calvin said, it becomes us to be excited by a holy joy that leads to celebration. I don't know of anything that has the potential to excite the believer to a holy joy more quickly than spending concentrated time thinking about and acknowledging God's goodness in our lives. So the psalmist begins by showing us the value of thanksgiving. It's a good thing because it's the right thing. It honors the Lord, and it's a good thing because it's a beneficial thing. It makes me glad.
It increases my joy. Verse five then introduces the next section of the psalm. This section focuses on the reasons for giving thanks. Now we could pick any number of God's works to give thanks for. We could thank him for creating such a beautiful world for us to live in. We could thank him for the enjoyment of family and friends, for our help, for the prosperity that he's blessed us with.
All of these things are wonderful things that have been given to us from God. But what in particular does the psalmist in Psalm 92 focus on? The psalmist here gives thanks to God, recognition to God, for the way in which he gives thanks in which he judges the wicked and blesses the righteous.
We could say it this way. He thanks God for his sovereign justice. First he addresses God's justice in dealing with the wicked. Look at verse six. The stupid man, the NIV says, the senseless man. Now the old King James says the brutish man cannot know, the fool cannot understand this, though the wicked sprout like grass and all evildoers flourish. They are doomed to destruction forever. When it comes to wicked people who hate God and fail to esteem him as God, there's often an appearance of success in their lives.
They sprout up like grass and even flourish for a time. Their success may manifest itself in the fact that they're able to maybe acquire a lot of wealth or a lot of influence or they succeed academically or they gain a high standing in prominent intellectual and social circles and people look at them and they think now there's a successful person. There's someone who's going places. They've got their act together. There's an appearance of credibility and authority and legitimacy about them. It's as if the more willing you are to abandon God's truth and submission to his word, the more likely you are to be accepted as legitimate in mainstream culture. Righteousness simply does not sell in an unrighteous world.
Now certainly there are exceptions to this, but clearly the appearance of legitimacy often goes hand in hand with spiritual compromise. So there's this appearance of success that follows wicked men, but how does Psalm 92 describe them? It says they're stupid fools.
That's not very flattering. The word stupid is an interesting word. It refers to animal-like behavior. An animal is reactive to its environment. It does whatever seems to work, but animals lack any sort of analytical ability. They can't remove themselves from a situation, analyze it, and then decide what the best course of action would be or what the most ethical or wise course of action would be. Wicked people are animal-like in that they evaluate themselves and their situation from a very limited perspective. They don't see the long-term consequences of their choices.
They don't have an eternal frame of reference. And so in the final analysis, wicked men are foolish because the very choices that have led to their success will ultimately lead to their destruction and eternal doom. God will punish the wicked because he is just. Now remember, this is a thanksgiving Psalm, and God's justice in dealing with the wicked is the Psalmist's first reason for giving thanks to God. Have you ever thought about thanking God for the fact that he destroys the wicked?
Is that even a valid attitude? Shouldn't we be sympathizing with and grieving over them as an act of Christian love and concern? I think we should be praying for them and grieving over them, but evidently it's also a good thing to thank the Lord for the destruction of the wicked.
The question is why? Well, I think the reason is given to us at the end of Psalm 92. In verse 15 it says to declare that the Lord is upright.
He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him. Our thanksgiving to God for his destroying of the wicked is an acknowledgement that he is upright. He will not ignore the wrongs that others commit because he is altogether righteous and good.
Let me ask you this, what kind of a God would he be if he overlooked wickedness? If he just swept wrongs under the rug and never set them right? One day I took my van to a mechanic to have some work done, and I had never been to this particular mechanic, but when it came time for me to pay him, he insisted that I claim to be an employee of a particular local business because employees of that business got a discount, and he could give me the discount if I would just lie and say that I worked for that company. Now, while I love getting discounts, don't get me wrong, this man's willingness to lie for my benefit had unintended consequences. If he was willing to lie to his employer to get my business, what would stop him from lying to me about something? I couldn't trust him with my vehicle because he had proven himself to be a liar, even though at the moment he was lying for my benefit.
Now, here's the thing. We may wince at the reality of hell, at the reality of eternal destruction that awaits the wicked, but if God threw out justice, overlooked justice in order to show us mercy, how could we trust him with that mercy? He'd be no better than that mechanic. The point is, God never lies, even to try to bless us, and so the fact that he will justly punish every wrong with perfect unbending consistency becomes the grounds upon which we're able to trust his mercy. He is always righteous, and that righteousness is proven and established in part by the fact that he dooms the wicked to destruction. So we thank God for his dealing justly with the wicked because that very justice establishes and assures us of the legitimacy of his mercy. This brings us to the other side of God's sovereign justice. Not only does he deal in wrath with the wicked, he also deals in grace with the righteous. Look at verse 10. But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox.
You have poured over me fresh oil. Verse 12, the righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord. They flourish in the courts of our God. So another reason to give thanks to God is that he deals graciously with the righteous.
Now there's something that's implied here that we need to not miss. We know from what has already been said that God does not give out blessing or grace simply by looking the other way or by pretending that certain people are righteous when they're really not. If any human being is viewed by God as a righteous person, it is because and only because of their union with Christ. If you're a Christian today, you are among those whom the Lord calls righteous. But that status was purchased for you by the blood of Jesus Christ. Your sins have not been just swept under the rug.
They've been paid for and paid for completely. So there's no double standard going on here. God's justice remains unblemished, even in his showing mercy to some while judging others. With that being said, certainly we recognize that the grace of God to us is reason for thanksgiving. If it weren't for that grace, we'd be headed for the same eternal destruction that the wicked are headed for. But notice the contrast between the wicked and the righteous. The wicked, verse seven, are like grass that quickly sprouts and then withers. But the righteous, verse 12, flourish like the palm tree.
They grow like the cedar tree. Our success, if we have been made righteous in Christ, is not just a flash in the pan. It's not just the appearance of prosperity.
No, it's real. There is longevity to our flourishing. It's something that will last. The righteous are not blades of grass. They are full-grown mighty trees, the psalmist says.
And notice where these righteous trees are growing. Verse 13, they are planted in the seed of the Lord. Verse 13, they are planted in the house of the Lord. They flourish in the courts of our God. The righteous don't grow in just any soil. They're planted in the house of the Lord and flourish in the courts of our God. There are places where the righteous simply do not and indeed cannot take root and prosper. Light and darkness don't mix. And so to feel like a foreigner in this world system can be expected in this life, but that's okay.
Why? Because the righteous grow and flourish where God is, where His Spirit is, where His people are. So this promise of flourishing is no guarantee that we will be successful in the world's eyes, that we will always be in good standing with our employer or that we'll never have any trouble making a living or feeling legitimate and respected around our colleagues. A promise to flourish is a promise to be healthy and prosperous as it concerns our pleasing God, to flourish according to God's standard of flourishing.
What does that look like? Well, I think it looks like joy and contentment. It looks like having the ability and the character to persevere through difficulty, having the spiritual fortitude to fight sin and flee from temptation, having the wisdom of the Holy Spirit in forming our decision-making and influencing our motives and desires, having the capacity to enjoy fellowship with other Christians, having the capacity to enjoy the Word of God and to understand its truths. That's what it means to flourish according to God's standard.
It means, verse 14, that we will still bear fruit in old age and will be ever full of sap and green. These are the reasons to shoot thanksgiving to God. These are works of God that warrant our gratitude. Well, where is all of this going?
Where does it all end up? The psalmist has told us of the value of giving thanks. It's a good thing. He's given us specific reasons for giving thanks. We thank God for his sovereign justice in dealing with both the wicked and the righteous. But then we come to the final verse of this Thanksgiving song and discover the result of giving thanks. Verse 15 says to declare that the Lord is upright. He is my rock and there is no unrighteousness in him. The psalmist is saying that the end of it all, the ultimate purpose of all this is to show that the Lord is upright.
He will make good on everything he has spoken. His threats to the wicked are not idle threats, nor are his promises to the righteous empty promises. Remember how we saw earlier that the Hebrew concept of thanksgiving has to do with proclaiming or heralding, drawing attention to the works that God has done. Well, there's an interesting repetition in Psalm 92 of the word declare. It opens the psalm in verse two and it closes the psalm in verse 15.
And I think what we find here is a cycle of sorts. At the beginning of the psalm, we're told to give thanks because it's the right thing. It's good to give thanks, so go do it. By the end of the psalm, we realize that one of the reasons God blesses his people so richly is so that we will be motivated to give thanks, so that we will declare his works, declare his uprightness, declare that he is our rock.
And so there's this cycle of thanksgiving. I give thanks because it's the right thing to do and this giving of thanks causes me to meditate on the works of God on my behalf. That's exactly what the psalmist is doing in verses five through 14. But then meditating on God's works on my behalf leads in turn to a greater declaration of thankfulness. Giving thanks produces more thankfulness, which produces more thankfulness and on and on it goes.
I think this multiplication of gratitude can happen in the human realm as well. Have you ever sat down after your birthday or maybe after Christmas and you've got a stack of thank you notes to write? And your initial motive in writing these notes may be simply because it's the right thing to do.
It's good. It's good to express gratitude when someone has gone to the expense, taken the time to give you a gift. So you sit down to fulfill your duty of writing thank you notes. But then as you begin to write these notes and think about the people that have given gifts to you and about their love for you and friendship, something begins to happen in your heart. Your appreciation not just for the gift but for the person begins to grow.
What perhaps began as a polite gesture of acknowledgement becomes a sincere reflection on the bonds of friendship and the sweetness of sharing life with other people who care about you and walk together with you through life. Your gratefulness meter starts to rise. The duty of thankfulness becomes the delight of thankfulness which just keeps producing more thankfulness and on it goes.
It's the cycle of thanksgiving and it's a good thing. Well if it is good to thank the Lord, we need to ask ourselves, do we thank the Lord? Do I thank the Lord? Am I practicing a lifestyle of gratitude to God? I wanna close by mentioning just a few practical ways for us to increase our thanksgiving to the Lord.
First let me suggest what is probably very obvious. You should give thanks every day to God for some specific work that he's done in your life. Let thanks to God be your first thought in the morning.
Let it be your last thought at night. Turn off the radio in the car and meditate on the works of God all around you. Give thanks every day to the Lord. Secondly, whenever you're experiencing some specific joy or pleasure, stop and think about the fact that the reason you're experiencing that delight is because God has given you the capacity and the opportunity to enjoy it. You may be in the middle of something very mundane like sitting in your living room reading a book and suddenly you're overcome with the sheer delight that you're surrounded with a spouse and sons and daughters or parents and grandparents, people that you love more than anyone else on the face of the earth. That sense of sudden delight is a call to give thanks to God who gives us the pleasure of family.
You may be driving down the road and notice the most beautiful sunset you've ever seen. It's a prompting from God to thank him for giving you eyes to see and for painting a sky that's worth looking at. Give him thanks when music makes you cry or dance, when you hear a story that creates a yearning in your soul, when you find yourself enjoying a moment of solitude on your back porch, just you and the Lord and a cup of coffee.
You're overcome with a sense of peace and rest. Church, all of these are simple graces that are calls to give thanks to the Lord for he is good. Thirdly, I want you to consider keeping a thanksgiving journal. Write a thank you note to the Lord. Journal your gratitude. You know, there's something about writing stuff down.
It forces us to take general impressions and think them through to specific expressions. It gives you a record of what God has done in your life, a record that you can read years later, a record that your posterity can read. It's just another means of expressing thanks to God. But don't keep those expressions of gratitude in a private journal. Giving thanks to the Lord is by definition a very public thing.
So lastly, let me encourage you to go public with your gratitude. Thanksgiving is not merely about fostering gratefulness privately in your heart. It's about shooting praise and credit and acknowledgement to God. Let people see you giving thanks before a meal in a restaurant. Let your neighbors hear you give God credit for the good things that happen to you.
You know, some of us are a little more timid than others. Some of us get intimidated at the thought of having to sit down with an unbeliever and walk through the Romans road or answer their objections to various Christian beliefs. But every one of us can open our minds and give public recognition, public credit to God for the works that he's done. When you give public praise to God, you're shooting arrows of gratitude at the target of divine blessing so that the whole world will see how good the Lord is. It is good to thank the Lord, to sing praises to your name almost high, at the works of your hands.
I sing for joy. Let's pray. Father, your goodness to us far exceeds our ability to express our gratitude.
But I pray that we'll try. I pray that we'll try to keep up with your blessings by being a fountain of gratitude. And when the world hears our gratitude, the world hears our gratitude to you, I pray that they'll be confronted with a God who is eternally sovereign and eternally gracious. I pray that the world, through our expressions of thanksgiving, will taste and see that you are good. Lord, above all, we thank you for the immeasurable and permanent blessing of salvation. If you gave us nothing else, it would be enough. It is far more than we deserve. And we thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.
