Thankful (Part 2)
Pastor Rollan Fisher
Focus: In Jesus, we have full redemption - therefore, we should serve him with thankfulness and gladness of heart.
Out of the Depths
Watching
For Full Redemption
Out of the Depths
We thank God because he meets us in our depths, as well as on our heights.
Psalm 130:1-8 ESV
“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.”
Biblical praise and worship can not be reduced to emotionalism, but is giving the God who created emotions what he desires.
Barriers in our minds and feeling self-conscious (thinking who’s looking at me?) are normal until you realize that Biblical praise is an exercise in becoming God conscious rather than people conscious.
Crying out to the Lord that he might hear your voice is a part of it.
God is not with us solely in our good moments, but hears our cries from the depths of challenge and despair.
The Hillsong song “Highs and Lows” wonderfully expresses this sentiment.
We are thankful because the gospel of Jesus Christ enables us to go to the Father in the midst of iniquities (sins), not merely in the absence of them.
When the Psalmist says “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?”, it is clear that the answer is no one but Jesus.
However, this does not give us a license to sin without reservation.
It gives us the grace to come to Jesus in repentance and faith, living a life of ongoing gratitude to him for his love expressed at the cross.
If we truly want to live in the freedom of thankfulness, let’s stop glorifying our trials and instead rejoice in the victories that Jesus has won and continues to win for us!
“We are too prone to engrave our trials in marble and write our blessings in sand.”
-Charles Spurgeon
Watching
We watch and wait for the Lord because he is faithful to instruct even as he forgives us, answering our prayers.
“But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.”
We fear, honor and respect God because he is the righteous judge of all the earth, to whom we will give an account of all of our actions from all of our days.
Yet we fear, love and are devoted to God because as we run to the cross of Christ to bear fruit in keeping with repentance (Matthew 3:7-12), he is faithful to forgive us and make us the men and women we are called to be in our families, our communities and the world.
“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.”
When we watch for the Lord, we are waiting not only for his intervention, but are looking to his example that we might follow him out of our mess as we employ his ways.
“this world is not going to be trampled and smashed by brutal, amoral regimes for ever. A day will come when God will bring to an end the state war-machines, the terrorist bombs, the consummate evil of totalitarian oppression, the gas chambers, death camps, killing fields, and countless other infamous instruments of death. There will be a judgment.”
John C. Lennox, Against the Flow: The inspiration of Daniel in an age of relativism
The Bible commands us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds that we might test and approve what God’s good, pleasing and perfect will is for our lives.
It is ultimately in God’s word that we put our hope.
A key to child-rearing is learning that redirecting and correcting are not the same thing.
The 1971 rendition of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory gave a perfect example of the dangers of mere redirection with Veruka and Henry Salt.
God’s word is our tutor turning us to Jesus - to his example and his sacrifice on the cross - that we might be corrected in our failings and not merely redirected with momentary remorse.
2 Timothy 3:14-17 ESV
“But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
For Full Redemption
In Jesus Christ, there is full redemption, therefore we live a life of love to him with a thankful heart.
“O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.”
Full redemption was ultimately accomplished through the propitiation of Jesus Christ by his blood spilled at the cross.
Romans 3:21-26 ESV
“But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”
This propitiation was significant because it did not just wipe away our sin but allowed God’s justice to be simultaneously satisfied through the crushing of Christ.
Therefore God could be both just and justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
This is the only way that we can live free of the guilt, shame and consequence of our sin - because Jesus has fully paid for it all, buying us back from all of our sins by his blood.
This means neither the past, present or future can separate us from his love (Romans 8).
And it is in this confidence that each day, in highs and lows, God’s grace has us march forward in the security and peace of his full redemption.
Therefore, each of my days become meaningful and full of hope in him as I look to advance his gospel Kingdom purposes.
“God takes the most broken part of people and turns it into their ministry.”
-Pastor Adam Mabry
When we have experienced Christ’s redemption, we become his agents of redemption in the midst of a fallen world.
“Our task as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to a world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to a world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to a world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion...The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology and even--heaven help us--Biblical studies, a worldview that will mount the historically-rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way...with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom. I believe if we face the question, "if not now, then when?" if we are grasped by this vision we may also hear the question, "if not us, then who?" And if the gospel of Jesus is not the key to this task, then what is?”
N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was & Is
What way has Jesus redeemed you and now given you a ministry to help bring his gospel redemption to the world?
Let’s be thankful today for all that Jesus has done for us by his love and called us to by his grace.
Let’s be thankful that today we can go to him at the cross through repentance and faith to be fully redeemed and become carriers of that redemption hope to the world!
Second City Church - Pastor Rollan Fisher