Have you ever been discouraged at how easy it is to receive something good from God and to not thank Him for it? Maybe you were consumed for a short period of time for praying for something that you knew you needed, and when God answered, you just moved on to the next thing. And then you realized after some time that you hadn't even thanked God for it. Perhaps one of you is even remembering right now at this very moment something that you received from God that you haven't yet thanked him for. Have you ever wondered what is wrong with us? How can we be so self-absorbed? So quick to forget? My goal, brothers and sisters, is to this evening stir up our thankfulness to the Lord. Because a Christian can never be too thankful. And if you are like me, you recognize that you're not nearly as thankful to God as you ought to be. It is my fear that Because we here in this country at this time have been given so much, relatively speaking, by God, we have become relatively thankless. Consider the warning that Israel was given a couple of times in the book of Deuteronomy, that when they entered the good land that the Lord had given them, and they received these good houses full of things they didn't fill, olives and vineyards and all of these different things that God had placed there, that when they ate and were full, they would be tempted to forget the Lord their God. We have received a lot and I am afraid that we are guilty often of doing the same thing that Adam and Eve did. Because we have so much Sometimes we tend to focus not on the many things we do have, but that one thing that we don't. But thankfulness. Thankfulness, I believe, is the cure for many ills in the Christian life and an antidote, I believe, for the covetousness that we often wrestle with because of the indwelling sin and corruption that remains even in us as believers. And for anyone here who is not a Christian, I want to provoke you this evening to a holy jealousy Not because I am trying to be rude or offensive to you, but because I want you to see that these three things that God offers in this psalm are three things that you desperately need. And I want for you to have them. So I want you all to please consider with me three precious things that we should be most thankful for. That if everything else that we had burned up we would still be thankful for these chiefest of blessings of God. So I wanna pose the question in our time together, why should we give thanks to God? And then I wanna provide three answers from the first few verses. But before I do that, let me once again just read the first four verses of this Psalm before we pray. Praise is due to you, O God and Zion, And to you shall vows be performed. Oh, you who hear prayer, to you shall all flesh come. When iniquities prevail against me, you atone for our transgressions. Blessed is the one who you choose and bring near to dwell in your courts. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple. Let's go to the Lord and ask for his help. O Lord God, we ask. Send forth your truth and your light. Let them lead us to your holy hill. Grant that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts would be pleasing in your sight. And stir up in us, O God, won't you? Stir up in us thankfulness to you. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. So the guiding question that I want for us to answer in this time together again is why should you give thanks to God? And the first of these answers is found in verse two. God hears prayer. Just take it at face value. How amazing is that? But we've got to go a little deeper. God hears prayer. In verse two, David refers to God as, oh you who hear prayer. Now, this word hear does not simply mean to hear in the sense of recognizing or detecting that someone is speaking. We all know, don't we, that there is a difference between hearing and listening. I work in a noisy factory. So I might hear some of my coworkers talking and they might even be talking to me. But unless I intentionally try to listen to what they're saying, I don't know what they're saying. So when David wrote this psalm, he used actually the same word that is used in Deuteronomy 6, 4, when God tells Israel through Moses, Here, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. And then he gives the great commandment. Now, do you suppose that Moses was saying, just recognize that I'm speaking to you and recognize that there are audible syllables that might mean something? Of course not. This was, they were being called to listen to the voice that they heard with the intent of obedience. In other words, God doesn't just hear the sound of our prayers as some audible noise. He listens to each and every one of his people's voices with a sympathetic ear. This means, dear Christian, that God hears your prayer. That the sovereign king of the universe, the one who made all things, the one who has all wisdom, all power, all might, we are but ants, and yet he hears your prayer. Not only has this king of the universe saved you, but he hears you. Like the father who bends down on his knee to hear what his precious little two-year-old is saying. Because of what his son has done for you, you have been adopted into the family of God. And your voice to him no longer comes as the voice of an enemy, but the voice of his precious child. If you're a parent and if you are, this won't be hard to imagine, you're in a room full of kids and you're visiting with some other parents and lots of playful noise going on and someone cries out, you might look to see, you know, maybe something's the matter. But in the same scenario, if all of a sudden you hear your own child cry out, what happens? That parental instinct comes out, that's my child, and you'll rush over and try to figure out what has happened. Your Heavenly Father recognizes your individual, unique voice. There is not a single prayer, brother or sister, that you have ever uttered to him that he has not heard. Now, perhaps you're thinking, as we sometimes think, but he hasn't answered my prayer. I keep praying and he hasn't done anything. He told me to knock, knock, seek, and I will receive. Well, I'm knocking and he's not doing anything. Dear brother or sister, God not giving you what you ask for does not mean that he doesn't hear you. Nor, this is very important, nor does it mean that he is necessarily saying no. As one pastor has put it before, God's no is not just a flat no, absolutely not. It's an I've got something better. Or a yes, my child, but not yet. So practical application, brother or sister, Don't grow weary. Jesus commends the persistent widow to us and he says, continue to knock. Keep knocking. Keep believing that he hears your prayer and he will answer your prayer in whatever way he knows is best. Well, how can we practice thankfulness then for the fact that God hears prayer? Well, you know the obvious application. Pray to him, of course. We ought to intentionally thank him for what he has done and what of himself he has revealed to us in his word. If you happen to wrestle with maintaining discipline in your daily prayer, consider modeling your prayer time off of the Lord's Prayer. This has been a personal help to me. If you're ever praying in the morning and you're just having a hard time keeping your mind straight while you're praying and you maybe are dozing off or you're starting to get distracted thinking about all the things that need to be done today, model your prayers off of the Lord's Prayer. There's a reason he taught us this. And you know what you can do is you can pray through each of the points of the Lord's Prayer. And as you hit each one, perhaps different things will come to mind related to that point. And you know when you're doing that that you're praying in a way that pleases the Lord. And it's also, I believe, a way that will probably keep you a little bit more alert if you happen to battle with the distractions and the sleepiness So we should pray. We should pray to him and not grow weary in praying to him. Maybe you're at a place in your life where you are not sure what the next step is. Maybe you are on the precipice of some big decision that you need to make. Consider joining your prayer with fasting. Consider just for instance, skipping lunch one day or skipping breakfast one day. And when those hunger pains start coming to you, remind yourself that as much as you're wanting to eat food right now, even more, you need the Lord's direction. There's something very important. There's something very helpful and tangible about those hunger pangs being a reminder that what we need more than our daily physical bread is our spiritual bread. What we need more than filling our bellies is for the Lord to speak to us and for the Lord to guide us. Unbeliever, if you are here, Although you are not one of God's children, I would still encourage you to pray. Pray to him to forgive your sins. Pray to him to help you love him. Pray to him to help you believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead. Pray for him to reveal himself to you. Pray for him to make himself known to you. And one other application for us as believers, how else can we practice thankfulness for the fact that God answers prayer? We should mark down providences. We should take some time to actually write out or type out the things that God has done. the prayers that we have asked, the prayers that we have made to him and the ways that he has answered those prayers. And perhaps if you continue to maintain that discipline, maybe some of you have already been doing this, you can probably look back at things you asked for one year ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, and you say, God, thank you for saying no. Thank you, I was so caught up in thinking that I had the perfect plan, you knew so much better than I did. Thank you. Perhaps you might even have the hindsight now to see that what God did in not allowing you to do what you wanted at that time was sparing you for something that would have been bad. So may the Lord help us to mark down his providences so that we would continue to be thankful to him. Well, answer number two, what is something else that we should give thanks to the Lord for? God forgives sin. I hope you're not tired of hearing that, dear Christian. God forgives sin. We can never grow too old for the gospel. In verse three, in the second part of verse three, David says, you atone for our transgressions. Children, what is a transgression? The children's catechism says that a transgression is doing what God forbids. So when Adam and Eve took the fruit that God told them not to have, They transgressed his command. They did what he had forbidden them to do. Now, we have all transgressed God's law by doing what God forbids. And what David is saying is that even though, even though we have done what God forbids, and we therefore deserve the wrath and curse of God for our transgressions, God clears the guilt of our transgressions. He atones for us. Okay, so we are guilty, but he clears us of our guilt, which begs the question, how? How can he do that? If we are legitimately guilty, the problem that should be raised in our minds is how can he remain just if he is clearing away our guilt? How can he let us get away with rebelling against him? This is not new to some of you, but a lot of people in our culture have it way backwards and they think it is so unfair that God saves some but leaves others to die in their sin. And that's not the case. The real question, the real conundrum is how can God save any of us? If we're born dead in sin, we are unable to save ourselves and we have rebelled against a holy and eternal God, the only fair thing is sending us to the eternal punishment in the lake of fire. We belong with the devil and his angels where they will be tormented forever. That's our portion. That is what we deserve. Proverbs 17, 15 says this, he who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord. What is he saying? It is unjust, it would be unjust of someone to declare just someone who is wicked. So, the question remains, how can God do this? How can God do this? Well, under the old covenant, God required animal sacrifices in order to, in a temporary sense, understand me correctly, a temporary sense, clear Israel of guilt, so that they could still enjoy his presence dwelling with them in the land of Israel, in the land of Canaan. This was the reality that David was immediately aware of, living himself under the Old Covenant, and most likely was in his mind when he was writing this verse. It was these animal sacrifices that God had prescribed in his law in order to allow a sinful people to dwell with a holy God. And this was a gracious thing of him, brothers and sisters. Even though it was under the old covenant, It was still a very gracious thing of him to allow even some sort of temporary atonement, even providing this way for Israel to have God dwell in their midst in the tabernacle and then later in the temple. That was gracious of him. He didn't have to do that. At the same time, David and every Israelite who actually believed in the Lord, and repented of their sins. They were forgiven in more than just this temporal way. Hebrews says that sacrifices never did anything to fix the heart. They were saved by their faith in the promised Redeemer. Going back to Genesis 3.15. If you ever wonder why Genesis 3.15 is mentioned so much in preaching and teaching, it's because it's one of the most foundational verses in the entire Bible. They were aware of Genesis 3.15 and believers were saved believing that promise. Now, under the new covenant, brothers and sisters, we experience a reality that David and Israel could have scarcely fathomed. That we are fully and completely forgiven on the basis of one sacrifice. and that there are no further sacrifices necessary to clear the guilt of our sins. You can just imagine David and some of the people of Israel saying, what? You don't have to make any more sacrifices? There's no more day of atonement? You don't have to bring animals to a priest for him to sacrifice on your behalf? Just this one sacrifice, that's enough. Yes, this one sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus has taken away our guilt by dying the death that lawbreakers like us deserve so that there are no further sacrifices necessary. We are declared guilt-free in God's courtroom because of our guilt being imputed to Christ. He was treated like a lawbreaker, even though we are the lawbreakers. And so God's wrath was poured out on him in our place. The arrow of God's wrath was pointed at us, and we had the target right on our chest. And instead, it's as though Jesus came right in front of us. So this means, dear Christian, that your sins are forgiven. Colossians 2.13 says, and you who were dead in your trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven all our trespasses. Then Hebrews 9.15, speaking of Jesus, therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance And here are the key words, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. So you don't have to make sacrifices for your sins, dear brothers and sisters. What you do, you confess your sins to God and ask him by the blood of his son to forgive you. And this means that on the basis of this once for all sacrifice, he will forgive you for your present and future sins. As one brother of mine put it, as Christians, we get to plunge ourselves into that fountain time and time and time again. You know the hymn, there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. We continue to be refreshed, we continue to plunge ourselves into that fountain time and time again and we receive new mercies every morning. We don't ever wake up to a new morning under God's wrath. Perhaps sometimes you wake up in the morning or perhaps late in the evening, you are reminded of some of your past sins and you are tempted to think to yourself, or maybe you've had a really rough day and you're thinking to myself, gosh, what a wretch I am. What a wretch I am. Will he still forgive me? The answer is yes, he will. Not because you deserve it, but because of Christ, his son. who lived perfectly in your place, who died in your place, and who rose again from the dead, that you might be made a new creature in him and be given eternal life. Aren't you thankful? Aren't you thankful, brother and sister, that your sin no longer separates you from God? So, how can we thank God for this? What are some ways that we can thank the Lord for this and practice thankfulness? Well, number one, we can sing to him. We can sing to him. This Psalm, it actually literally says in the text above it, a Psalm of David, a song. This was something that God's people were singing together. So part of the way that we can cultivate thankfulness is by singing to God. And not just waiting for the Lord's day to do it, not even just waiting for family devotions to do it, but singing it on your own, singing it in the car on the way to work, singing it at work, singing it in the morning, singing it when you're feeling discouraged and depressed to remind you of the truth that you're singing. Consider this, which is one of my favorites. Jesus, thy blood and righteousness. Jesus, thy blood and righteousness. My beauty are, my glorious dress. Amidst flaming worlds and these arrayed, with joy shall I lift up my head. That's just one verse of that beautiful hymn. And I commend that to you as a constant meditation to keep before you and to sing. What is another way that we can practice thankfulness for God forgiving sins? We can share the gospel with other people. We can share what God has done for us. We can open our mouths and we can pray to the Lord for the boldness and the wisdom to know how to speak to those who are outside of him, but we can As another Psalm says, say what he has done for my soul. And likewise, we can encourage each other. We can encourage and exhort each other with reminders from the gospel. Just like we need to preach the gospel to ourselves, sometimes we need to remind each other of the gospel. Spouses, sometimes you need to do that for each other because you're feeling particularly overwhelmed perhaps by your duties of parenting or homeschooling or work or whatever else. You're overwhelmed by these things and sometimes you tend to forget the promises of the gospel because you're aware of your remaining sin. And so your spouse can come alongside you and say, yes, but Jesus. Remember your Redeemer. He lives. And then lastly, another application. Unbeliever, if you are cognizant, if you are aware of the fact that you are not a Christian, don't you want to be the one who is talked about in Psalm 32? Don't you want to be that blessed one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sin is covered, against whom the Lord counts no iniquity. Even now, if you come to him, if you repent and believe, you will be saved. Number three, and finally, what is another answer to the question, what should we give thanks to the Lord for? God, provides satisfaction. God provides satisfaction. Verse four says this, blessed is the one whom you choose and bring near to dwell in your courts. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple. Now, I wanna get specifically to the point where it says, we shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house. But in order to do that, I've got to unpack a little bit of the context in the first part of the verse. So in case you're wondering exactly as I was, what are these courts exactly? We hear language of the courts often in the Psalms. And if you're like me, you're kind of like, okay, what exactly is being referred to? Well, Albert Barnes has this to say. This refers properly to the area around the tabernacle or the temple, but not to the tabernacle or temple itself. And so the worship of the people was actually offered in those courts and not in the tabernacle. So when it says here, blessed is the one who you choose and bring near to dwell in your courts, what is in mind is the outer area of the tabernacle, because the temple wasn't built yet. In case you're wondering why then is the word temple used in the last part of the verse, sometimes the word translated temple is just a place that designates God's sanctuary or a place that has been set apart to worship him. It doesn't always have to refer to the actual temple. So to dwell here, what does it mean to dwell in your courts? Are people like living there? Well, if it's referring to people worshiping God in the courts, what is meant then is, according to another scholar, to have ready access to the sanctuary for worship. Okay, so it seems to be, although of course there are always arguments about what's going on in the Hebrew, it seems to be that this is a way of, a poetic way of saying blessed are the ones who are chosen to worship the Lord in his courts outside the tabernacle. So more or less an Old Testament equivalent of what we're doing tonight. We'll get there later. So who did he choose to bring near? This could be generally a reference to his people Israel and perhaps even those foreigners who had joined themselves to Israel. Or as others say, it could be specifically the priests and the Levites who actually did live there. But either way, what happens in the next part of the verse is it goes from blessed is the one who dwells in your courts, whether that's the people offering worship to him or whether that's the priests and the Levites who lived there, it goes on to say we shall be satisfied. So either way, here, there's definitively talking about a collective we referring to God's people. With that being said, what is this satisfaction that is being referred to? What does it mean that we shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house? Well, the word satisfaction denotes having wants or needs fulfilled, and it's most often used with reference to hunger or thirst. So, There are a few references in Deuteronomy 6 and 8 about when Israel come to the promised land. I alluded to one of those earlier. It says when you eat and are full. And the word literally in the Hebrew is the same word for satisfied, okay? But what's going on here is that David is saying that the people are going to be satisfied not with food, not with drink, but literally the good of God's dwelling place. In other words, God's people were satisfied and are satisfied seeing him, hearing him, being with him, drawing near to him in worship, and sensing him draw near to them. The good of God's dwelling place is his presence. So they were blessed with his presence when they drew near to him to worship him as a congregation. And another scholar here affirms that this phrase, we shall be satisfied with the goodness of his house, is really another way that denotes having communion with God. And I'll mention here real quick, because I think it's helpful. Calvin explains it this way. He says, in these former times, God could have directly stretched out his hand from heaven to supply the wants of his worshipers. but saw fit to satisfy their souls by means of the doctrine of the law, sacrifices, and other rights and external aids to piety. So what about us? How does this apply for us? Someone might say, well, the church is God's dwelling place now, so we are his temple. And this is true, but there are some conclusions that we must not rush to. This does not mean that because the church is the temple of God, that we can have church at home. We don't have church at home. We also do not have church online. as a replacement for corporate worship. The goodness of God's house is literally that, his presence amongst his people who have gathered to worship him. I'm not saying that there is not legitimate warrant for us to sometimes not come to church. If we are providentially hindered, if there's sickness, et cetera, there are legitimate reasons. But if you are thinking to yourself that because we are the new temple, because we are God's people, we can worship wherever we want, that's not the case. How do we know that for sure? Think about what David says in the other Psalms. One of them was read earlier in Psalm 42. What was it that he was so, that David was so consumed with? What was it that was bothering him? He says here, my soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? And then he continues in verse four, these things I remember as I pour out my soul, how I would go with the throng and do what? And lead them in procession to the house of God. With glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. In Psalm 63 too, David says his soul is thirsty and hungry, why? because he is in a wilderness and he is unable to meet God in corporate worship. And he remembers beholding God in his power and glory. Psalm 27, four, David says, one thing have I asked of the Lord, that I will seek after. What is it, David? What do you seek after? That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. In Psalm 122, verse one, David says, I was glad when they said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord. So what am I saying? What am I babbling up here about? The point is that the goodness of God's house is something that we experience on the Lord's day when we gather together to sing to him, Pray to him and hear him speak to us through his word. Why? Why do we do this? Because Christ, number one, we've been given the fourth commandment to keep the Sabbath, but in addition to that, Christ promised to bless us with his special presence wherever we gather in his name on his day to offer him worship. He says, where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am amongst them. His special presence is here right now, brothers and sisters. This is the goodness of his house that we get to experience. Maybe someone might be saying, though, I've been seeking God and I don't feel satisfied. By all means, brother and sister, keep seeking him. You don't imagine that you should give up seeking him, do you? The more you seek him, the more you will know of him and the more you will be satisfied with him. If you don't attend corporate worship when you're legitimately able, if you don't attend to your personal devotions, of course you're not going to be experiencing much satisfaction in God. There are many distractions that keep us away sometimes from attending to our personal devotions. As one pastor has asked before, when sometimes people will come to him and say that they're not feeling close to God, he will sometimes ask the question, well, what is your screen time compared to your word time? what amount of time each day are you spending seeking the Lord in prayer, in his word, et cetera, versus how much time you're spending on your phone or your other gadget where you're not actually using it as a tool to get something done. That's something that we need to be aware of and we need to be cognizant of. Maybe if you're not feeling satisfied, ask yourself, are you still trying to cling to the things of this world? Perhaps your satisfaction in God is low because you're giving into that Adamic impulse to worship and serve what is created. There are lots of good things that God has given us in this world, and our impulse sometimes is still to go after those things. One of my precious children shared with me that they struggle with the temptation to love the good things more than God. And I appreciated the honesty of this child in saying that. And that's so revealing of what we still wrestle with as adults. We still wrestle with going after the things that God has provided and focusing on those more than we're focusing on him. So. One more thing I'll read from Calvin, he says, we are not to understand that believers are fully replenished with the goodness of God at any one moment, rather it is conveyed to them gradually. So satisfaction in God isn't something that necessarily comes to you all at once and fills you up at once, it's something that You gotta be patient with, and you gotta work at it, and you gotta continue seeking Him time and time again. So how should we give thanks for this satisfaction that God provides? Number one, we obviously should continue to seek Him in corporate worship on the Lord's Day. Again, this is the goodness of God's house. This is what he gives us to satisfy us. And it is a good and kind thing for him to do that. And then in addition to that, Romans 12, Paul calls us to offer ourselves. What is our spiritual worship? He says it is to offer ourselves as living sacrifices. Our lives, brothers and sisters, are to be testimonies of thankfulness. Unbeliever, are you satisfied? You may feel satisfied at this moment. You may have many good things going on in your life. But what will happen when all those good things that make you feel satisfied right now are gone? The good things that you experience now are only a shell of what God gives to those who love him. I wanna read to you this timeless quote from C.S. Lewis that many of you have probably heard before. He says this, we are half-hearted creatures. fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. So if you're not in Christ, God offers you a satisfaction that never diminishes in the person and work of Jesus Christ. And Jesus says, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. He says also, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Well, what are some final applications? I've only mentioned three things in this psalm to be thankful for, but I had initially planned on mentioning five. So perhaps one thing you could do as an application is looking through this beautiful psalm and finding other reasons to be thankful. There's at least two more. So perhaps you might look through this psalm and mine it for other reasons to be thankful. Another thing you might consider doing is taking even just 10 or 15 minutes either later this Lord's Day or perhaps the next or on just a regular day to write down all of the prayers that God has answered that you can just remember even in the last few weeks or perhaps in the last year or so. Write down the things that God has done for you and pray to him and praise him for it and maybe even tell someone else about it. and then endeavor, brothers and sisters, strive to keep these blessings before you as the chief blessings so that we may better resist the temptation to covetousness. So your circumstances, whatever they may be, may be difficult, but this is true, and this you should take heart in and keep before you. Number one, God hears my prayer. Number two, he has forgiven my sins. And number three, he satisfies me. Well, let me go ahead and close us in prayer. Gracious God, we have every reason to be thankful to you. And we confess that even now we are not as thankful as we ought to be. Won't you please continue to stir up in us faithfulness, thankfulness, so that we can more zealously and diligently serve you, and that we might better, more effectively witness to other people who don't know you. Won't you please bless us the rest of this evening, and we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.