A Most Generous God #2

What a wonderful Savior. What a magnificent Lord. And to realize that He is the most generous God who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. This is the Truth Pulpit, featuring the Bible teaching of Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Hi, I'm Bill Wright. Today, as Don continues teaching God's people God's Word, he'll resume his look at the proper heart attitude and mindset that Christians must have as we approach the Lord's communion table.

So if you're ready, let's get started. Here is part two of a message called, A Most Generous God, here on the Truth Pulpit. And so God initiated this forgiveness of sin. Don't think for a moment.

I put it this way on social media today. God does not love you because you had faith. You have faith because God set His love upon you. All of this was God's idea. The prompting, initiating movement was from God to you, not from you to God. 1 John 4.19 says, We love because He first loved us.

God was the one who loved us, not vice versa. God initiated all of this wonderful goodness to us. And so David responds in worship. And notice how he emphasizes what I just said about God being the initiator of it. Verse 4, he says, How blessed is the one whom you choose and bring near to you.

God does the choosing. God reached out. God drew us to Him. God brought us near.

Christ brought us near. And so He gets all of the glory. He gets all of the worship. That's why we respond to Him in a spirit of thanksgiving.

He's been so generous to us. He saved us when we weren't even looking for it. And so we respond in the spirit of worship to Him.

Now David goes on. He moves beyond the fact that God is one who forgives sin. And he praises him secondly in Psalm 65 because he is the God who rules nature. He is the God who rules nature. And if you think of the horrific forces that nature can sometime unleash on us in F-5 tornadoes and Category 5 hurricanes and 7.0 earthquakes and all of those kinds of things and you realize the great vast power that is present in nature and that God rules over that with a greater power, if you've ever lived through a serious earthquake and you felt the ground tremble under your feet and toss you back and forth, tossing you from wall to wall, I have, it's a frightening display of the power that is resident in creation. Then you realize and you come to this text and you realize that God super intends and rules over all of that? God rules over the storm? God rides on the wind of the hurricane? You see, more reason to praise Him and to give Him glory.

Look at verses 5 and 6. By awesome deeds you answer us in righteousness, O God of our salvation. You who are the trust of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest sea, who establishes the mountains by His strength being girded with might. David calls God the trust of all the ends of the earth. In other words, God has a universal claim on the trust and obedience of all men everywhere even if they don't respond. The fact that they deny Him, ignore Him, make false gods and make up false religion in order to do something of their own making and worship the works of their own hands and the work of their own minds doesn't change the fact that God reigns over all and that God has a claim on the trust and obedience of all of them. And every one of you in here speaking to Christian and non-Christian alike, Jesus Christ is Lord and Jesus Christ therefore has full authority over your soul and He calls on you and He commands you to repent and to come to Him.

He does not give you the option of choosing differently. You are commanded by Christ to repent and believe in the gospel for the salvation of your soul. And those who reject that and refuse that bring upon themselves the greatest kind of judgment to hear the gospel of Christ, to hear the shed blood presented to you and to turn away from that.

Scripture says how much severer punishment does one like that deserve than anyone else? You have heard the most sacred things my friend. You have heard even tonight the most sacred things about Christ and His shed blood. And if you judge yourself unworthy of them, if you judge yourself not interested in them and you condemn the shed blood of Christ by your indifference, oh, what an awful fate awaits you if you do not repent of that cold hearted rejection of this most generous God who sent His Son to be the Savior of everyone who would believe in Him. We are dealing with matters of great import, of great sobriety.

As Christians we deal with them with a sense of sober joy, and we rejoice in these things. But there is a time and a place, especially as we come to communion, to recognize that these are matters of serious import that require our wholehearted response of worship. Well, David points out in verse 6 how God displayed His power when He created mountains by His Word. That power calls forth praise. His power over nature points to His power to forgive sin.

And here's the thing. He is such a good God that anyone on earth, no matter how guilty, no matter how sinful, anyone on earth can come to Christ and find Him to be a willing Savior. Jesus said in John chapter 6, He said, the one who comes to Me I certainly will not cast out. Isn't that remarkable? That even after a life of rebellion, a life of gross sin, that a man, a woman, a boy, a girl could come to Christ full of sin and find in Christ a Savior that's willing to receive Him, receive her, forgive her, and cleanse her, and welcome her into the family of God.

This is amazing. This is amazing that God would have mercy on chronic fornicators, that God would have mercy on chronic homosexuals, that God would have mercy on chronic drunkards, chronic blasphemers who come to Him in a spirit of repentance and saying, have mercy on me, the sinner, as the tax collector did in Luke 18, and to realize that this gracious God receives sinners just like you and just like me. Well, might our lips fall silent to realize that such guilty men and women could come and find this God gracious and willing to receive them.

This God who rules over creation is a God who is willing to forgive. David goes on and points out in verse 7 and expands on the theme in nature here. He says, who stills the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves and the tumult of the peoples, they who dwell in the ends of the earth stand in awe of your signs. You make the dawn and the sunset shout for joy. You see, you see proof of His power in the morning, in the evening, at sunrise and at sunset. You see His glory painted on the skies.

As you look out over the clouds of a lake on a morning sunrise, and you see those gorgeous pinks and blues and all of the other colors that come in, and you realize that you're just seeing, you're just seeing the tip of the finger of His creative majesty in something like that that's overwhelming in its own self. He rules over nature. He's a great God. He's a generous God, the God who forgives sin, the God who rules over nature. And then thirdly, David closes in the final section of the psalm, verses 9 through 13, praising Him as the God who provides food. God's generosity is particularly seen at harvest time. Look at verses 9 through 11, and notice as I read this the repetition of the pronoun you.

He is setting God apart with an emphatic use of the pronoun, repeating it over and over again, repeatedly emphasizing, God, it's you that does this, you and you alone, you and no one else. You are the one through which we have our daily bread. So in verses 9 through 11, he says, you visit the earth and cause it to overflow. You greatly enrich it.

The stream of God is full of water. You prepare their grain, for thus you prepare the earth. You water its furrows abundantly. You settle its ridges. You soften it with showers. You bless its growth.

You have crowned the year with your bounty and your paths drip with fatness. You know, in the area in which we live here in the Midwest, it's easy for us to take water and rain for granted, you know, because we get so much of it. Well, it's not like that everywhere. I remember being with a friend in South Africa, and I was doing something like letting the water run while I was brushing my teeth, and the lady of the house rebuked me. I thought, how can you rebuke me over this? I'm just brushing my teeth. She said, oh, don't waste water. Water is precious, and we don't get much of it around here, and so we have to conserve it with everything that we have. She didn't take water for granted, and the people in the land of Israel, they didn't take water for granted either. In that land and in that day, the matter of water was a matter of life and death. And here, David gives thanks to God, and he says, you're generous in providing us with what we need. Before the days of the sophisticated irrigation that we have today, the blessing of rain on them in that time was a matter for profound thanks.

And so, David said, and just notice that repetition of you. You visit, verse 9. You greatly enrich it. You prepare their grain. You water its furrows. You settle its ridges.

You soften it with showers. You bless its growth. You have crowned the year. Your paths drip with fatness. God, I'm recognizing that you are the one who has done this. It's not enough for him to say it once or twice. David is so filled with praise, so filled with gratitude that he just says it over and over again. God, you have done this. You have done this.

You have done this. You have blessed and given to us in so many ways. And David's thanking him for water.

How much more, as we come to the communion table, should there be an exclusivity of the glory of Christ in our minds? And we say, Lord, it's you that's done this. You are the one, Lord Jesus.

Praise be to your name. You are the one who came from heaven. You are the one who lived a perfect life. You are the one who offered it on the cross as a sacrifice to God. It was your blood that was shed. It was you that was put in the grave. It was you that was raised from the dead.

It was you that descended on high. It is you that intercedes for me at the right hand of God. It is you who's coming again. You are coming back to receive me so that I can be where you are.

John 14, 1 to 3. It's you. It's you. It's you, O Christ. There's no one else. My mind, my heart, my strength, my love is consumed with you.

It's who you are. And the resulting abundance, going back to Psalm 65, when the communion table's in front of me, it's hard to get very far from the cross, and you just keep coming back to it. At the end of Psalm 65, he describes the bounty further. Verse 12, he says, the pastures of the wilderness drip, and the hills gird themselves with rejoicing. Normally, the wilderness would be brown and bare.

It's a desert over there much of the time. But David's describing a land that's bright and fruitful. It's a cheerful scene. It's a beautiful scene. God, your bounty is all around us.

You're so good. This description of the abundance earlier in the Psalm, it's a picture of an overloaded farm cart so filled with the produce of the harvest that as the cart goes along, the produce is just falling off because the bounty is so great, and the farm cart is so full. David closes the Psalm.

David was quite the man. It's his greater son that we worship, but he was such a magnificent poet. He ends the Psalm on this great poetic note as he personifies the beauty of the earth, joining in the songs of praise with the people of God. Verse 13, the meadows are clothed with flocks. In other words, there's abundant flocks covering the meadows. They're all out there eating, and our prosperity is assured there.

The valleys are covered with grain. He personifies them. He says, they shout for joy.

Yes, they sing. So much goodness revealed that David says it's as though creation itself was joining and responding to honor your great name, oh God. Now, beloved, I want to take an extra moment here to help you see that this Psalm points beyond the earthly blessings of which it focuses on the last two sections there. But when you realize what the Psalm is saying as it's speaking before the time of Christ, speaking about how God forgives sin, God rules over nature, God provides food, you realize when you come to the New Testament that it has laid the groundwork for us to recognize Christ and recognize the deity of Christ, that he is God in human form. Does God forgive sin?

Well, so does Jesus Christ. Turn to the Gospel of Mark with me. We're just going to look and read a couple of extended passages. Again, just culminating our focus on Christ as we prepare our hearts for the communion table.

Mark chapter 2. We ask the question, does God forgive sin? Well, so does Jesus Christ. In chapter 2, verse 5, you remember they brought a paralytic to Jesus, lowered him through the roof so that Jesus could see him and the paralytic could be near him. And in verse 5, Jesus, seeing their faith, said to the paralytic, Son, your sins are forgiven. But some of the scribes were sitting there and reasoning in their hearts, why does this man speak that way?

He is blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God alone? Immediately, Jesus, aware in his spirit that they were reasoning that way within themselves, said to them, why are you reasoning about these things in your heart? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven? Or to say, get up and pick up your pallet and walk?

Those words are equally easy to say. Proof is in the power that is behind them. And so he says in verse 10, but so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he said to the paralytic, I say to you, get up, pick up your pallet and go home. And he got up and immediately picked up the pallet and went out in the sight of everyone so that they were all amazed and were glorifying God, saying we have never seen anything like this. His power to cure a paralyzed man illustrated and verified and vindicated his power to forgive sin.

That's the key issue. Well, does God rule over nature? So does Christ. Go to chapter 4 of Mark in verse 37. Actually, let's start in verse 35 just to set the context. On that day when evening came, he said to them, let us go over to the other side. And leaving the crowd, they took him along with them in the boat, just as he was, and other boats were with him. And there arose a fierce gale of wind, and the waves were breaking over the boat so much that the boat was already filling up.

Jesus himself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? And he got up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, hush, be still. And the wind died down, and it became perfectly calm. He spoke into the wind of a hurricane, and it stopped.

He spoke into surging waves that were about to sink the boat, and they flattened out instantly, illustrating the control of Jesus Christ over nature. The one who has power over nature is God, and the one who has power over nature has power to forgive sin. Well, thirdly and finally, and following the sequence of Psalm 65, does God provide food?

You know what? So does Jesus Christ. Look at Mark chapter 6, verse 34. As you're turning there, understand that when we enter into the presence of Christ, when we contemplate him, when he comes to us in the gospel, when he comes to us by his Holy Spirit, when he saves us, we are in the presence of deity. We are in the presence of God Almighty, and this should call forth the deepest response of adoration and worship.

Chapter 6, verse 34. When Jesus went ashore, he saw a large crowd and he felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things. When it was already quite late, his disciples came to him and said, this place is desolate and it is already quite late. Send them away so that we may go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat. But he answered them, you give them something to eat. And they said to him, shall we go and spend two hundred denarii on bread and give them something to eat? And he said to them, how many loaves do you have?

Go look. And when they found out, they said, five and two fish. And he commanded them all to sit down by groups on the green grass.

They sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties. And he took the five loaves and the two fish. And looking up toward heaven, he blessed the food and broke the loaves. And he kept giving them to the disciples to set before them. And he divided up the two fish among them all. They all ate and were satisfied.

And they picked up twelve full baskets of the broken pieces and also of the fish. There were five thousand men who ate the loaves. Christ miraculously exercising his control over creation, over bread, over fish, multiplying it effortlessly in order to feed the crowd of many thousand that were in front of him from such a small, visible provision. What a wonderful Savior.

What a magnificent Lord. And to realize that he is the most generous God who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. That he loved us before the foundation of the world. That he chose us before the foundation of the world. And that when Christ was hanging on that cross, for those of you that are in Christ, he was thinking of you. He had you in mind because he was dying as a direct substitute for your sins. He was there bearing God's wrath against your sin. And so somehow in the greatness of his infinite mind, he was conscious of you as he suffered on that cross.

Without question, Jesus displayed the greatest act of generosity the world has ever seen by giving his life for us upon the cross of Calvary. Well that's going to bring our time to a close for today here on The Truth Pulpit. Don will continue in his series called Reflections on Our Lord next time. And if you'd like a copy of today's lesson, just go to thetruthpulpit.com. While you're there, you'll find all of Don's lessons as well as other great free resources.

That's all at thetruthpulpit.com. And now just before we go, here again is Don with a closing thought. Don? Well my friend, I know that it's easy to get discouraged as you walk through this life. It's a fallen world and that makes things difficult for us so often. Let me just encourage you as we close today to take heart as you remember the eternal purpose of God. Scripture says that momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison. Look to your heavenly reward in being with Christ, my friend, and all will ultimately be well. Thanks, Don. And thank you, dear friend, for being with us today. I'm Bill Wright. We'll see you next time on The Truth Pulpit, where Don Green continues teaching God's people God's Word.