Our Scripture for today is from Psalm 136. Psalm 136, it has this one refrain, for his steadfast love endures forever. Give thanks to the Lord for his good, for his steadfast love endures forever. I'm not going to repeat that every time, because it is at the end of every verse. And so don't get nervous or worry about that. I will simply read the parts that are different and once in a while have that refrain, for his steadfast love endures forever. Psalm 136, beginning at verse 1, it says, Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of gods, for his steadfast love endures forever. Give thanks to the Lord of lords. for his steadfast love endures forever. To him who alone does great wonders, to him who by understanding made the heavens, to him who spread out the earth above the waters, to him who made the great lights, the sun to rule over the day, the moon and the stars to rule over the night, for his steadfast love endures forever. to him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt and brought Israel out from among them with a strong hand and an outstretched arms, to him who divided the Red Sea in two and made Israel pass through the midst of it, but overthrew Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea, for his steadfast love endures forever. to him who led his people through the wilderness, to him who struck down great kings and killed mighty kings, Zion, king of the Amorites, and Og, king of Bashan, and gave their land as a heritage, a heritage to Israel his servant, for his steadfast love endures forever. It is he who remembered us in our lowest state and rescued us from our foes. He who gives food to all flesh for his steadfast love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of heaven for his steadfast love endures forever. There ends the reading of God's word. Dear people of God, if there's one thing that we can be assured of in this world, it's the fact of change. If there's anything which we can learn from the past, it's the fact that the future will bring changes into our lives. Whenever we reminisce about the past, whenever we start thinking about it, we see how much things have changed over the years. It seems as if nothing these days ever stays the same. It seems as if everything changes as time goes by. Now, that tells us something. That tells us that there are very few guarantees in our life. Because the constant change which we experience in this life, because of that, we can never be sure what the future holds for us. And because of that, we can really never know what tomorrow will bring. Life is sometimes very unstable. It is very unpredictable for us. We are never quite sure about what lies around the bend as we live out our lives for Jesus. Today, we are at the end of another year. We're at the end of an old year, and we are looking forward to the beginning of a new year. The year 2017 will soon be gone, and the year 2018, it's just around the corner. As we reflect on this past year, we are reminded of the fact that the past year has been a year of change. In this past year, there have been people who have been born while others have passed away. There have people who have started going to school this year, while others have graduated from school. Some have begun new careers, new jobs, while others have retired. Some have gotten married, while others have lost their spouses. 17, like all of the other years before it, has been a year of change. Yet there is one thing, one thing which has not changed in 2017, one thing which never changes as the years go by, one thing which always remains the same no matter how much everything else changes. And that something is the is the eternal loving-kindness of our God, or as the English Standard Version Bible, which you have, says, the steadfast love of God. Psalm 136 begins by saying, Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his loving-kindness, or his steadfast love, is everlasting. And that's the thing which never changes, no matter what. And that's the thing I would like to look at this morning. And so my topic this morning is the eternal loving kindness of our God, or the eternal steadfast love of our God. And there are three parts, three things I would like to look at. First, the nature of this steadfast love. Then, the historical illustrations of this steadfast love. And then third, our commanded response to this steadfast love. We begin by looking at the nature of God's loving-kindness or God's steadfast love. What is it? What does that word, loving-kindness or steadfast love, what does it mean? What does it refer to? Well, what we have here is a Hebrew word which cannot be translated into the English language. The original word in the Hebrew, it is so rich with meaning, it is so full of meaning that there's no single word in the English language which can fully communicate all that it means. And as a result of that, this word has been translated in a number of different ways by the various translations of the Bible and by the various commentaries on the Book of Psalms. For example, the King James Version calls it the mercy of God. The New American Standards, which I use in my study, it calls it the loving kindness of God. The New International Version, it calls it the love of God. And the English Standard Version, which you have in your pews, it calls it the steadfast love of God. The Leupold Commentary calls it the kindness of God. The Wiser Commentary calls it the grace of God. All of these words, mercy, loving, kindness, love, steadfast love, kindness, grace, they all try to grasp at what this Hebrew word means. They all describe that word partially, but none of them describe it fully. None of them describe it completely. What does this word really mean? What does it really refer to? Basically, the word refers to God's proper covenant behavior. Now, that's not all that it refers to, okay? But that's a big part of it. It talks about God's covenant faithfulness. It tells us that God is always faithful to his covenant promises. It tells us that God is always faithful to his covenant people. He is always faithful to you. And to me, God has made a covenant with us. He has made an agreement. And as a result of that covenant, he will always be our God, and we will always be his people. And in that covenant, God has promised to do certain things for us. For example, he has He has promised to be our God. He has promised to take care of us and to provide for our daily needs. He has promised to guide us and direct us and protect us as we live out our lives for him. Furthermore, God has promised to save us from our sins. He has promised to take us with him, to go to heaven with him when we die. Those are some of the things. which God has promised to do for us. Now in return, God expects certain things from us. He expects us to be his people in the world. He expects us to live out our lives for him. He expects us to love and serve one another in Christ. He expects us to praise and glorify him by the way we live, by the way we worship, by the way we get along with one another in this world. In a somewhat simplistic way, that's the covenant agreement which God has made with us. And Psalm 136 reminds us that God is still keeping covenant with us. He is still being faithful to us. He's still keeping the promises which he has made to us. Now we, we are not always faithful to God. We do not always keep our part of the covenant. In fact, we are often unfaithful. We are often disobedient to God. We break his law. We break his will for our lives. But God continues to fill his promises to us. He continues to fulfill them. He continues to protect us and to provide for us. He continues to guide and direct our lives. And he continues the process of saving us from our sins. He continues to sanctify us. And he does that. Because he loves us and because of the covenant which he has made with us, which he made with our forefathers and which he made with us, we experience God's wonderful blessings in our life because he is keeping his covenant promises with us. Now, what all of that means is that the Bible looks at God's covenant faithfulness from two different perspectives, two different points of view. It looks at God's covenant faithfulness both from God's point of view and from our point of view, from the human point of view. From God's point of view, his action toward us is proper covenant behavior. He continues to be our faithful God because he has promised to be our faithful God. When he pours out his blessing upon us, he is keeping the promises which he made so long ago. God provides for us, he guides us, he protects us, he saves us because he has promised to do these things. That's what it looks like from God's point of view, from God's perspective. But then how about our point of view, the human point of view? From our point of view, that all looks totally different. From our point of view, God's blessings are acts of his grace. They are acts of his mercy, his love. They are acts of his kindness. They are acts of God's grace, mercy, and love and kindness because of what? Because we are sinners. And because we are sinners, we have failed to do our part of the covenant. We have failed to keep our part. And because of that, we do not deserve anything which God gives us. God doesn't owe us anything. He doesn't have to provide all of these things for us. But he gives us, he provides them anyway. And that means that anything which we receive from God is nothing but his mercy, his kindness, his love, his grace to us. That's what it looks like from our perspective, from our point of view. What this psalm is talking about then is not only God's love and mercy as we see it, but also his covenant faithfulness as he sees it. Our scripture says that God's covenant faithfulness lasts forever. The NIV says his love endures forever. The ESV says his steadfast love is everlasting. The NSASV says that his loving kindness is everlasting. That means that God will always be faithful to his people. He will always be faithful to you and me. He will remember his promises to us forever. God, who has been faithful to us in the past, will always be faithful to us in the future. God who has been faithful to us in this past year, who has loved us and who has been merciful to us, he will always be faithful to us in the new year. He can always be dependent upon to take care of us. He will always provide us with whatever we need to live out our lives for him. There will never be a time when God is not loving and kind toward his people. There will never be a time when He will not fulfill His covenant promises to us. Even when we stray away from Him and rebel against Him on a temporary basis, then God will remember His covenant promises, and He will be merciful, and He will love us, and He will always bring us back. There's never a time. when he is not loving and kind toward us. God always brings us back because he is faithful to his promises, because he loves us, because his kindness is everlasting. Now sometimes, He will bring us back in ways which are painful to us, but he will always bring us back. There will never be a time when he is not loving and kind toward us. He will always be there to bless us, to guide us, to direct us, to protect us, to save us. from our sin. That's the nature of God's loving-kindness. That's the nature of his steadfast love. And there's no one English word that can grab all that and put it in a nice, neat package for us to remember. Now then we come to the historical illustration of his loving-kindness. In order to illustrate, in order to demonstrate the loving kindness or the steadfast love of God, the psalmist then recalls several events from the history of the people of Israel. And he does that to show how faithful God has been to his people throughout history. He begins in the garden with Adam and Eve and he tells us that at creation that God created the heavens and the earth and he created all of the plants and all of the animals and the fish and the bird. And he also created a man and a woman to live on the earth. And after his creation was complete, God made a covenant with Adam and Eve. He made them responsible to work in the garden. He made them responsible to supervise the growth of the garden. And he promised to provide them with everything which they would ever need to live in the garden. And God did as he promised. Adam and Eve, they had all that they needed to live happy, healthy, prosperous lives in the garden. God was faithful to his promises to them. God's faithfulness, the psalmist says, continued after the fall. After Adam and Eve sinned, God came to the garden to look for them. And he came not only with judgment, with condemnation for their sin, but he also came with love and mercy and kindness and grace. God came into the garden after the fall with a promise of salvation from sin. He promised to redeem his people from their sin, to restore them as his holy, holy sinless people. And he did that because he was being faithful to his covenant promises to them. Now the psalmist goes on with his list of God's covenant faithfulness. God was faithful to his people when he delivered them from their slavery in Egypt. He was faithful to his people when he brought them through the Red Sea. He was faithful to his people when he carried them through the wilderness. He was faithful to his people when he protected them from their enemies while they were in the wilderness. God was faithful to his people when he brought them into the Promised Land. He was faithful to his people when he enabled them to capture the land. Those are all the historical senses or examples of God's faithfulness. But ultimately, God's eternal loving kindness, his eternal steadfast love was revealed in the coming of Jesus Christ. God's covenant faithful to his people was ultimately revealed when he sent his son into the world. You see, throughout the history of Old Testament Israel, God knew He knew that his people could not and they would not keep their part of the covenant. He knew that his people were rebels at heart who would refuse to live as he commanded. He knew that his people were sinners at heart who would be in need of his salvation. And so he promised to send his son into the world to save them from their sins. And in order to keep that promise, God sent his only begotten son into the world. In order to fulfill his promises, God sent his son to die on the cross for your sins and for mine. The ultimate example of God's eternal loving-kindness or his internal steadfast love to his people is the birth and the death of Jesus Christ. He came. He was born on that first Christmas day. He came and he died for our sins because God had promised to save us from our sins. And so the death of Jesus Christ on the cross is the ultimate example of God's covenant faithfulness, of his covenant love, of his covenant mercy, of his covenant kindness. But it doesn't end there. The death and resurrection of Christ is not the end. of God's covenant faithfulness. He continues to be faithful with his people today. He continues to be faithful to each one of us today. He continues to be faithful to each one of us personally, individually. In this past year, he has been at work in your life and he has been at work in mine. He has provided us with all of the daily necessities of life. He has guided and protected us as we lived out our life for him. He has brought events into our life which have molded and shaped us to be his people. And he will continue to do that in the future. And it's not only personally, individual, that God is faithful. He also continues to be faithful to us corporately. That is, he is faithful to us as a church, as the body of Christ in this place. He has blessed this church with faithful members who are willing to make sacrifices for our church. He has provided us with gifted people who are willing to use their gift for the ministry of this church. And he will continue to do those things because he has promised to do it. He will do it because of his loving kindness, because of his covenant faithfulness to us. as a church. Those are some of the historical illustrations of God's loving kindness, of his covenant faithfulness. Now that brings me to the third thing I want to look at, and that is our commanded response to God's loving kindness, to his steadfast love. What must be our response to God's covenant love, to his faithfulness to us? How must we respond? The psalmist tells us that we are to respond with praise and thanksgiving. He tells us to give thanks to God for his love, for his faithfulness to us. He says, oh, give thanks to the Lord for his good, for his steadfast love is everlasting. That means that we must always respond to God's eternal covenant love and faithfulness with praise and thanksgiving for health and for strength, for family, friends, for blessing upon our work. for his leading and protection in our lives, for his church and his wonderful salvation, for the many gifts which he gives us. Those are some of the things for which we must give thanks to our God. And furthermore, scripture says this is not optional. It tells us that we must make ourselves give thanks. Literally, it said, oh, cause yourself to give thanks to the Lord, for his loving kindness is everlasting. We must cause ourselves to be God's grateful, thankful people. We may not sit around and wait until things become better for us, and we may not sit around and wait until we naturally feel thankful to God. Instead, we must take the initiative. In a sense, we must take the bull by the horns, so to speak. We must make ourselves grateful to God. Now, I know that often we are not grateful people. Sometimes we look at what others have and we say, we don't have that, so life is not as good for me as it is for them. And then we get a bit grumpy at times. It's not always easy to be grateful to God, especially when he brings difficult circumstances into your life. It's not easy to be grateful to God when he takes someone whom you love very dearly and he takes that person away from you by accident or by disease. It's not always easy to be grateful to God when he turns your plans and hopes for the future and turns them completely upside down. And yet he commands us to be grateful. In order to do that, we must focus on the good that God is doing in our life. We must believe God's promise as it is found in Romans 8, verse 28, where it says that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. God, because of his loving kindness toward us, because of his covenant faithfulness to us, has brought many good things into your life and mine in the past year. But there was also some things that were not so good. And he has promised to use all of these things to bring about spiritual growth in your life and in mine. And for that, we must be grateful, even though some of these things bring pain into our lives. And so, as we face the new year, remember what the psalmist says, Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love is everlasting. Remember that always. Let us give thanks to the Lord for the way in which he has taken care of us in the past year and for the way in which he will also take care of us in the years that lie ahead. Think about that as we enter the new year. Amen.