Sandy Sweet

Sunday, November 27, 2016

Pastor Thomas Pileggi

Psalm 100.1 – 5

Psalm  100 “A Psalm of Thanksgiving”.  The Hebrew word for thanksgiving literally means confession.

• It means to confess God’s character and His works.
• It focuses on God, not what He gives. Thanking God for who He is.
• The psalm is addressed to all the earth and the last verse says to all generations

1. Worship and Thanksgiving is everyone’s responsibility – “all the earth”

• There is a real danger of determining our worship or our thanks on the basis of how much we have or how we feel.
• When times are good or we feel good emotionally or we have accumulated enough stuff to give God thanks.
• All this could change in a second.
• The only thing we have for sure is our relationship with the Lord.
• Giving God thanks in worship focuses on God.

2. Worship and Serve the Lord with a thankful heart

• Worship is not a performance. It is an act of expressing love to God from your heart.
• “Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful singing.”
• Joyful noise – to shout, raise a sound, cry out, give a trumpet blast.
• Joshua 6:20 – When the trumpets sounded, the people shouted, and the sound of the trumpet, when the people gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so every man charged straight in, and they took the city.
• What made the wall fall? GOD
• Why did God knock the wall down? Obedience of the people
• Why did the people shout? Faith in God.
• “Serve the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful singing.”
• It doesn’t say “serve the church.” It doesn’t say “serve the preacher.”  It says, “serve the Lord.”  If you serve the Lord you will serve at church and people out of a thankful heart.
• ”Come before His presence with singing”
• Come – to go in, enter
• Presence – face to face in front of Him
• Hebrews 4:16 – come boldly to the throne of grace with confidence.
• 1 Thessalonians 5:16 – 18 – “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

3. Dependent on God for whom He is and what He has done.

• “Know that the Lord is God.  It is He who made us, and we are His; we are His people, the sheep of His pasture.”
• God is God and we are NOT.
• I am dependent on God. He created even the air that I breath.  He knows every hair on my head.  He knows every beat of my heart.  I thank HIM for being God – I am dependent on Him.
• We thank God for who we are – we are His.
• 1 Peter 2:9 – “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light: the sheep of His pasture.”
• Most of us want to be shepherds, not sheep.
• Psalm 23:1-3 – “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul.  He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.”
• We don’t know where the still waters and green pastures are. And every time we go out searching for the, we always end up in the wrong place.
• If we are created, He is the Creator.
• If we are sheep, He is our Shepherd.
• If we enter His courts, He is our King.
• If we serve Him, He is our Master.

4. Practice Living a Life of Thanksgiving and Praise.

• Luke 17 – Jesus enters a village and upon entering He finds ten men who were lepers. They stood a long way off and yelled out to Jesus, “Jesus, have mercy on us!”  When Jesus saw them, He said to them, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.”  Did you know that they had not been cleansed yet?  They left before they were cured – because the Bible says, “that as they went along, they were cleansed>” Do you know what happened then?  One of them One of them – only one of them – when he saw that he was healed, turned around and went back to see Jesus.
• The Bible says he fell down on his face at the feet of Jesus, glorified God and thanked Jesus for what He had done. Only one out of ten THANKED Jesus.  Do you remember what Jesus asked him?  “Were there not ten cleansed?  But where are the nine?”

Does your life bring honor to God?  Does your life draw people to God or away from God?

If you’re doubting His goodness and grumbling about your trials, you’re bringing dishonor to God.

Those around you who don’t know God will think, I’m not so sure I want to know his God.

But if those around you see your joy, your glad submission to Him, and your thankful spirit, they may be drawn to the God who is so good.

Numbers 13.1-2,26-33

Greatness is not determined by attendance, offerings, or size of the facilities.  Greatness is determined by believing the promises of God.  Whose report will you believe

Ten spies saw themselves as grasshoppers.  They saw the enemy as giants and they did not see God at all.  They retreated in fear.

1.  Fear outweighed the blessing of the fruit that they saw.
2. Fear measures obstacles and challenges against our own strength and resources instead of focusing on God’s power and resources.
3. In their fear they fell into the trap of thinking that it all depended on them, and failed to rely on God.
4. Fear takes your eyes off the promise and off of God.  They should have seen the giants as grasshoppers in the eyes of God.

The important question is not, “How big is the problem” or “How big am I” but “How big is my God?”

How can 12 people who walk the same path see, smell, touch, and taste the same thing and have a different report.  One is based on a promise by faith and the other based on works.  Faith sees an obstacle as an opportunity to receive God’s promise.  Fear sees an obstacle as a roadblock to God’s promise.  Fear originates from a works mentality.

One report was a report of courage, hope, and of complete dependency upon God.  The other report was a report of fear and not believing God’s promises.  Instead of relying on the promises of God, instead of believing God, they chose the message of despair and doubt.  We need to have the faith like Caleb and Joshua and believe God even when outnumbered.  God is looking for some Caleb’s and Joshua’s who will truly trust God even when the odds are against them.  Who will be faithful to the end and who will stand up for the truth and will not run away from it?