“It is Good to Give Thanks” Psalm 92

Amen. Old Thanksgiving hymn there. Well, turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm 92. Psalm 92. Thanksgiving is approaching, and next week, the Sunday before Thanksgiving, where we’ll have our Thanksgiving dinner, Chelsea and I will not be here. We will be away. Our anniversary always falls on the week of Thanksgiving. So we are, this year, going to be taking a cruise. So we’ll be gone for a week. So that’ll be our first cruise. So pray that that goes well, because I’m looking forward to it, I hope. And we would like that to be a good time. can be praying for us in that. So I won’t be here for really Thanksgiving Sunday, so I wanted to speak on a Thanksgiving psalm, and that’s what we will do this evening.

It is good to give thanks, and that’s the title of this sermon, and that is how Psalm 92 opens. Psalm 92 verse one says, it is good to give thanks to Yahweh, and to sing praises to your name, O Most High. I am reading from the LSB, the Legacy Standard Bible, as I have been for a couple of years now, and a few of you have been asking recently, the Bible that I’ve been using, and that’s what it is, the Legacy Standard Bible. I really enjoy that version, and I think it’s a good version to use. But this evening, what we plan to do as we study this psalm is to think about why it is that we give thanks, and how we are to think about thanksgiving. Giving thanks is no small thing for the Christian.

Pastor touched on this this morning and he really set up this sermon really well as he was closing this morning and bringing to our attention Romans chapter one. Because in Romans chapter one, Romans 1:21 specifically, it shows us that thanksgiving is what we were created for. Again, Pastor Piatt left off here this morning, and we’ll pick this up, this idea that giving thanks is the heart of what it means to be a Christian. Romans 1:21 says this, for even though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their thoughts and their foolish heart was darkened. This is the beginning of Paul’s description of the downward spiral of the depravity of man. Once man rejects God, fails to honor God and give Him glory, and fails to give thanks to God, then they proceed down the spiral of Romans 1.

So don’t underestimate the centrality of thanksgiving for the believer. It is central in our life. There in Romans 1:21, it is side by side with glorifying God. Glorifying God and giving Him thanks. Gratitude is essential to live out 1 Corinthians 10:31, to do whatever we do to glorify God, for the glory of God. In order to do that, We must recognize who God is by being thankful for who He is. And really, thanklessness is a large part of what it means to fall short of the glory of God. Thankfulness and giving God glory are hand in hand, then thanklessness is what it means to fall short of the glory of God. One author puts it this way, while it was thanklessness that was the first sin to emerge from our ancient rebellion against God, in our ongoing redemption, it is thanksgiving that replaces the bitter spirit with a generous one.

As Christians, we can view the attitude of thankfulness as evidence that our bitter, hateful heart has been replaced and made new. being thankful to God for who he is, for the blessings he gives us, that’s all evidence that we’ve been changed, that that bitter heart has been replaced, that heart of stone has been replaced with a heart of flesh. Thanksgiving is essential for the Christian because the Christian life from beginning to end is one of grace. It is one of undeserved favor from God.

John Piper, He has explained it this way, and he does a really good job explaining Thanksgiving, and this is from his book, Future Grace. He says this, gratitude was created by God to echo grace. You think of an echo, you make a sound and then the sound echoes back, it’s a response. And he’s saying gratitude is an echo to God’s grace. He goes on to say, we were created by God to echo his grace, and we’ve been redeemed by Jesus to echo his astounding grace all the more. And he continues, I exalt gratitude as the central biblical response of the heart to the grace of God. The Bible commands gratitude to God as one of our highest duties. In Psalm 100, verse four, which I read this morning to open our service, it says, enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name. And God says that gratitude honors him. In Psalm 50, verse 23, he says, he who suffers, or he who offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving honors me.

So this is all to frame this idea of what thanksgiving is. Thanksgiving is honoring God. It is what it means to be the people of God. And another essential part of this idea of thanksgiving is that thanksgiving itself presupposes God. It presupposes that God exists and that he is the giver of all things. Because not only are you giving thanks for something, you are giving thanks to someone. And you think about often families have a tradition at Thanksgiving to go around the table and mention something you’re thankful for. And often we list the different good things in our life, but have you ever thought about who am I thanking here? Who is it that I’m thanking for these things?

So maybe our tradition ought to be, what are you thanking God for? Because, I mean, you might be thanking yourself for some of the nice things that you’ve provided for yourself in your life, but that’s just kind of vain. We really ought to be thanking the true source of every good and perfect gift that comes down from the Father of lights. Thanksgiving presupposes a giver. It presupposes God. And whether people know it or not, this idea of Thanksgiving assumes there’s someone greater than themselves who’s given things to them.

So giving thanks, giving thanks to God for what he’s given to us is precious and it’s essential in the Christian life. And so is trusting him for his ongoing provision, being thankful for what he has not yet done. And that’s what we’ll see in Psalm 92 this evening. Psalm 92 is a Thanksgiving psalm. It’s a psalm that doesn’t tell us who wrote it. It doesn’t ascribe an author to it. But what we do see in the prescription here, it says a psalm, a song for the Sabbath day. A song for the Sabbath day.

So this is a song that God’s people were to sing on the day that he set apart for them to worship him. This is a church song, if you will. A song they were to sing on the Lord’s day, or in that time in the Old Testament, on the Sabbath day, as a way to worship him. To remind them God is the giver. They need to be thankful to God as the giver. Again, this is a Thanksgiving psalm, but we’ll also see that this is a wisdom psalm. It’s a wisdom psalm, and one of the ways that that is detected is that it contrasts the righteous and the wicked. Often the wisdom literature and wisdom psalms specifically speak of the righteous and the wicked.

This psalm actually is a lot like Psalm 1. because of the contrast there, but it also compares the righteous to a tree, a tree that is planted. And you see that in Psalm 1, you see that in Psalm 92. And then it shows the foolishness of the wicked. So all that is to set up our text for this evening, Psalm 92. And what we see in Psalm 92, we’ll see three divisions in the Psalm. First, as the opening stanza or opening verse of this song, we see in verses 1 through 4, a thankful praise. This psalm opens with thanksgiving. Then in verses five through nine, the middle of the psalm, we see kind of the inverse of all this, is the wicked selfishness, or the selfishness of the fool. And then lastly, in the last section, verses 10 through 15, we will see rewarding worship, or the benefits or rewards that come to the people of God as a byproduct of worshiping God. And so we’ll see how these three divisions and these three themes all interact with this idea of thanksgiving here in this text this evening.

So I’m gonna read Psalm 92 for us. Psalm 92, I’m gonna read the entire thing, verses one through 15 here. This is the word of the Lord. A psalm, a song for the Sabbath day. It is good to give thanks to Yahweh and to sing praises to your name, O Most High, to declare your lovingkindness in the morning and your faithfulness by night, with a ten-stringed lute and the harp, with resounding music upon the lyre. For you, O Yahweh, have made me glad. By what you have done, I will sing for joy at the works of your hands. How great are your works, O Yahweh! Your thoughts are very deep. A senseless man does not know, and a fool does not understand this, that when the wicked flourished like grass and all the workers of iniquity blossomed, it was only that they might be destroyed forevermore. But you are on high forever, O Yahweh, for behold, your enemies, O Yahweh, for behold, your enemies will perish. All the workers of iniquity will be scattered. But you have raised up my horn like that of the wild ox. I have been anointed with fresh oil, and my eye has looked exultantly upon my foes. My ears hear of the evildoers who rise up against me. The righteous man will flourish like a palm tree. He will grow like a cedar in Lebanon, planted in the house of Yahweh. They will flourish in the courts of our God. They will still yield fruit in old age. They shall be rich and fresh to declare that Yahweh is upright. He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.” This is the word of the Lord. That is Psalm 92.

As we saw earlier, I explained earlier the different divisions of this psalm. The psalm opens with thankful praise. That’s what we see in verses one through four. And the psalmist here, the author, encourages people to worship, to worship the Lord by pointing out how good it is to praise him. Verse one says, it is good to give thanks to Yahweh and to sing praises to your name, O Most High. It is good. That is the phrase that begins this psalm and it really, everything else in this opening is subordinate to the phrase, it is good. He says it is good and then all of the things that come next are what is good. And that phrase there, it is good, could also be said it is right. It is fitting. It is what we ought to do. Praise is fitting to God. God’s nature and His actions require praise. It is who He is. The most natural thing in the world for any creature of God is to praise the Creator. Again, this entire opening is placed underneath the heading that it is good.

The psalmist says, number one, it is good to give thanks to God. It is good to be grateful to the one from whom all things come. This is the idea we spoke of earlier. It’s supposing a giver. It assumes there is one who has given in order to give thanks. You need to be thanking somebody. So number one, it’s good to give thanks.

Secondly, it is good to sing praises to his name. The reason why we come together and sing God’s praises on a Sunday is because it’s good. It’s right, it’s fitting. It’s what we ought to be doing. You know, some people think that we’re kind of strange because we get together and we sing all together. We sing in unison, we sing songs as a group of people. I mean, who does that? But it’s not strange. It is the most normal thing in the world when you know who God is. When you know who your creator is. It is what is good. It is what we ought to do. In fact, You’re the strange one if you don’t sing praises to your creator. It is good to sing praises to God.

Thirdly, the third thing that comes under what is good is in verse two. To declare his loving kindness and his faithfulness. So it is good, verse two, to declare your loving kindness in the morning and your faithfulness by night. To declare something. When we experience something truly great, truly awe-inspiring, we cannot wait to tell somebody about it. It’s the way we are. It’s part of being creatures that were made to worship. When we experience something, we are made to pour out to others what we’ve experienced. This isn’t just about what happens in church on Sunday. This happens throughout our life, with everything that happens.

This is like 90% of the reason why social media exists, so that people can tell other people about their life, and how great things are that happen to them. Like, when a young lady gets engaged, and she goes on and shares 276 pictures of her engagement, And then she shares each of those pictures individually six times a day for the next three months because she can’t wait to tell people about this wonderful thing that happened. That’s what happens to us when we experience something truly great, truly awesome, awe-inspiring. We want to tell somebody about it. And that’s why he says it is good to declare who God is.

When you truly experience who God is, you won’t have to be told to get out there and evangelize, to get out there and tell your friends and neighbors and coworkers about God. You won’t be able to contain yourself. It’s another reason why we should be gathering every week to refill our evangelism tank so we have more that we want to pour out to everyone we meet about who God is.

We see first here the word lovingkindness. We are to declare your, meaning God’s, lovingkindness in the morning. That is that Hebrew word hesed. And it’s a hard word to translate in English because it is so full of meaning. It is the covenant love of God. It’s what most fully describes his character, and we don’t have a word in English that translates that word fully. That’s why we have a lot of words in our Bible that the word hesed is translated into. Because depending on what the context is, it tells a different aspect of this one characteristic of God. For some examples of how this word is translated is loving kindness, mercy, grace, faithfulness, love, unfailing love, loyalty, goodness. All of that comes from this one Hebrew word that describes the character of God. It is who God is. When you get a glimpse of God’s loving kindness, of who God is, it is good. To declare that in the morning and His faithfulness in the evening. This is a picture of telling of God all day long. All day, every day. So it is good to declare who God is.

Fourthly, it is good to worship Him with musical instruments. Verse three, with the 10-stringed lute and with the harp and with resounding music on the lyre. This is a full-fledged worship service. They have an orchestra. They are playing together. They are exalting the name of God with all of their might, with everything that they can get their hands on. They’re worshiping God. This is what God’s people do. We worship in singing, in declaration, and with music. And why do we do this? Why is it that this is the response of God’s people? Do we just do it because it’s our duty? Do we thank God simply because the Bible tells us that we have to?

Well, verse four gives us the answer. Four, you, O Yahweh, have made me glad by what you have done. I will sing for joy at the work of your hands. Four tells us why. Why is it that we do these things? For or because you have made me glad. God has made me glad by the things that he’s done. Why do we give thanks and sing and declare and worship? Because he makes us glad.

Did you know that God wants you to be happy? He does. He wants you to be happy. But that does not mean he wants you to have the desires of your sinful heart. He does not want you to just have all of your wants, all of the things in life that you covet. That’s not what it means that God wants you to be happy. What it means is God knows that you are happiest in him. The more of him that you see, the more of him you experience, the more you know him, the more happy you will truly be. The more of God that we see and know, the more happy we will be. The more that God is the object of our desire, the object of our worship, the more we will be filled with happiness and joy. So yes, he wants us to be happy, and he knows that only happens in him.

And what is the good and right response to him making us happy, making us glad? Verse four, I will sing for joy at the works of your hands. We ought to sing for joy. Our happiness, our gladness in who God is ought to inspire us to sing about it. when we realize what God has done, when we realize the works of His hands, that He’s called us to be His own. Us. He has called us to be His own. He has chosen us in eternity past. He sent His Son to live and die and bear the punishment for all those He had chosen. And He raised Him up so that His people could have new life. He has come and He’s given us a new heart so that we will seek after Him. And He’s put within our hearts faith in His Son. And now He’s made us new and causes us to want to live for Him and to be more and more in the image of Him every day.

When you realize all of that is just barely scratching the surface of what He’s done for you, you cannot help but sing for joy at the work of His hands if you are in Christ. If you’re His. If you’re not in Christ, you need to come to know Him today, so that you too can be filled with this thankful praise. This thankful praise is only right for the people of God who have been redeemed. It is proper for all creation, but only His redeemed will actually recognize who he is and give him thanks for it. And that is the first division of our psalm, thankful praise.

Starting in verse 5, we see the middle section, wicked selfishness. wicked selfishness, verses five through nine. And this is really the inverse of righteousness and thankful praise that we just saw. Verse five is really a continuation of this worship, but it’s a transition into the wickedness of the fool. Verse five says, how great are your works, O Yahweh. Your thoughts are very deep. So the psalmist says he will sing of the works of God’s hand in verse four. He says, I will sing. Then verse five, he’s singing already. How great are your works. Your thoughts are very deep.

And again, this is really an introduction, an example of what the wicked do not do, which is what follows in verse six. He says, a senseless man does not know. And a fool does not understand this. Understand what? How great are your works? Your thoughts are very deep. Here you have a biblical description of a fool. What is a fool like? He doesn’t know God and he doesn’t understand his works. A fool is senseless and lacks understanding.

Oh, how many senseless fools we have in our world today. And many of them are touted as the smartest, most brilliant minds in society. So many PhDs and medical doctors and CEOs and professionals of every kind proclaim to be the most brilliant. but it doesn’t matter what you’ve accomplished or what your credentials are, if you don’t know God and give him credit for his great and glorious works, you are nothing but a fool. You are a senseless fool who lacks understanding. And again, we are filled, we are a world filled with fools today. And fools are given preference and promotion. in our world. In fact, if you deny God and His ways, you will flourish in the world. That’s what the next verse says.

Verse 7, that when the wicked flourished like grass and the workers of iniquity blossomed, the wicked flourish. In our society today, there are certain things you must say and approve of to be accepted and advanced in any business setting. Evolution, global warming, climate change, the LGBTQ agenda, using someone’s preferred pronouns, the idea that a man can become a woman, calling somebody a birthing person. I could go on and on. These are dogmas that you must approve of if you are going to be accepted and advanced in the world’s system. They are the creeds of the world’s religion today. You must accept and promote them or you are unorthodox. You are the heretic, according to the world. But all of these things deny God’s works. They do exactly what the fool does here in this psalm.

For example, evolution. Evolution denies the works of God in creation. The idea of man-made climate change denies God’s sovereignty over his creation. The LGBTQ agenda, using pronouns, the trans agenda. They deny God’s work in creating us male and female in his image. And I could go on and on. All of these things seek to flip God’s ways, God’s works, upside down. And to deny them all together. But these are the wicked ideas that flourish today. You have to conform to these things in order to get ahead in many fields of business and society today. And it is these things that reveal the fool. And those who go along with it just to get ahead are the fools who are senseless and they lack understanding. Verse six, a senseless man does not know and a fool does not understand.

But as the psalmist says, reality is much different than the perceptions of the fool. The fool thinks if he goes along with these things and denies God, and denies the work of God’s hands, that I’m going to get ahead. And maybe you justify it in your mind, well, if I just don’t rock the boat, I’ll believe what I believe, and I’ll just go along with what they want, as long as I can get ahead and flourish. But verse seven says, the wicked flourish like grass, and the workers of iniquity blossomed. They got ahead in life. They made it. They had success. But verse 7 isn’t done because it says, it was only that they might be destroyed forevermore. The fool’s rejection of God only increases his condemnation. The fool’s silence in the face of the denial and rejection of God and His works increases his condemnation. Romans 1 and 2 tell us this very explicitly.

We read Romans 1:21 earlier, and then Paul launches into a graphic description of the wickedness of the man who rejects God. And he gets to the end of chapter one, and he says, not only is it those who practice these things, it’s those who give approval to them that are condemned, and we get to Romans chapter 2. And Romans 2 verse 5 gives us the result of everything that happens in Romans chapter 1, starting with not glorifying God and not giving thanks to Him. You read all the way down through those verses, you can get to Romans 2 verse 5, and it says, because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. That is what Psalm 92:7 is saying. It was only that they might be destroyed forevermore. The fool, by rejecting God’s works and failing to give thanks for him, for what he’s done, is storing up wrath for himself. That will be the result.

Because verses eight and nine go on to say this. This is the psalmist’s victory cry over the workers of iniquity, the wicked fools. But you are on high forever, oh Yahweh. For behold, your enemies, O Yahweh, for behold, your enemies will perish. All the workers of iniquity will be scattered. But I thought they were flourishing. I thought they were blossoming. Yahweh God is on high. That will never change. He will not be defeated. His purposes will not be thwarted. He will not be refused. God wins, period. God’s enemies are the psalmist’s enemies. God’s enemies are our enemies. And sometimes we forget that. And we need to think carefully about this as we read enemy language, war language in the Psalms. We don’t like to think about war imagery, but that’s exactly how the Bible describes the people of God and the people of the world. We are at war. We have enemies.

Now, we don’t go out and destroy and kill our enemies. We try to win them over to God’s side. We try to win them over to the side that’s going to win. And we let God do the destroying. But we need to realize that the world, those without Christ, are the enemies of God. For us, they’re our mission field. But as God’s children, they are enemies of God, and therefore enemies of ours. Again, we don’t seek to destroy them, we seek to win them. But it’s important to think through this, think through this language, because it gives us warning. It gives us instruction on how we are to conduct ourselves. We don’t cozy up to the enemies of God, to give them a hearing and listen to their godless ideas. We preach repentance to them. And we let God either bring them over or destroy them.

And too often, Christians view God’s enemies as friends. And they bring them in and they make them close. And that’s how wicked and godless ideas make their way into the church. And having enemies, God’s enemies, does not mean that we’re not loving. We are to love our enemies. But that does not mean to stop viewing them as enemies. We want to win them. We don’t want them to influence us. We don’t want them to evangelize us with the world’s godless ideas because all the workers of iniquity will be scattered. That is what happens in wicked selfishness. And that’s our second division of this psalm.

Thirdly, the final six verses, verses 10 through 15, we see rewarding worship. Rewarding worship. Verse 10 begins with a contrast. But you, but you have raised up my horn like that of the wild ox. I have been anointed with fresh oil. This is a contrast again. And unlike the wicked who are senseless and ignorant and enemies of God, The righteous are raised up and anointed by God. The wicked raise themselves up and are crushed by God’s judgment. The righteous humbly recognize who God is and give him thanks, and he raises them up.

The righteous give thanks to God and are raised up by Him, and thankfulness is ultimately a sign of humility. It’s saying, I know the good things in my life are not my doing. The gifts in my life, the good and perfect gifts, come down from the Father of lights. They come from God. Verse 11, the psalmist goes on to give us a little perspective. He says, and my eye has looked exultantly upon my foes. My ears hear of the evildoers who rise up against me.

Sometimes it looks like it is the wicked who flourish in life. It is the wicked who blossom. But here the psalmist is looking exultantly, victoriously on his foes, those that rise up against him, because he knows who wins. God’s people have perspective because he’s given it to us. He’s told us that he’s won the war. We still have battles, but he’s won the war. God’s people have perspective. Sometimes we just need to zoom out. Look at the big picture. Remember their end.

It may look as though the wicked have it easy. They get all the benefits. Their life is great. Wouldn’t it be good if God gave us the favor that he gives them? Zoom out. Remember the end of the wicked. Remember who wins. Because as the psalmist points out in verse 12, the righteous man will flourish like a palm tree. He will grow like a cedar in Lebanon. There’s that word flourish again. The righteous are planted like a tree by God.

In verse seven, he said, the wicked flourish like grass. Grass grows really fast. It looks really healthy at first. A tree grows a lot slower. But man, it lasts a lot longer than grass does. And that’s the difference. This is a comparison that the psalmist is making. The wicked flourish like grass. They got a head start. But just wait. The righteous flourish like a tree. And verses 13 and 14 describe what it is to flourish like a tree, like a palm tree. A cedar of Lebanon, cedars of Lebanon grew very tall. They were very healthy trees. Verse 13 and 14 says, planted, this is the tree, planted in the house of Yahweh. They will flourish in the courts of our God. They will still yield fruit in old age and they will be rich and fresh.

So you see several descriptions here of the tree that flourishes, the tree that’s been planted by God. We see the rewards of a life of worship, the rewards of a life of someone who recognizes who God is and has given him thanks.

Number one, they are planted in the house of Yahweh. Righteous people are found in the house of God. In contrast to the wicked, righteous people go to God’s house and worship Him. Or another way to say it is, the righteous go to church. They’re with God’s people. They worship Him. And you will hear and see critical words and complaints about the church, about pastors, coming from people who never darken the door of a church. That’s the mutterings of fools who fail to listen to God, who fail to recognize who God is and what He requires of His people. Only the fool wouldn’t want to come worship God in his house and be with God’s people. Coming to church isn’t a duty that we have to do. It’s a privilege. It is a reward for the life of the righteous. Don’t take that privilege for granted. They’re planted in the house of Yahweh.

Number two, they flourish in the courts of our God. This is a very specifically worded sentence here for our phrase. It’s that word flourish again. It’s a key word in this song. The wicked, in verse seven, flourished like grass. The workers of iniquity blossomed. In the world system, the wicked get ahead. The righteous, those who are planted in the house of God, they will flourish, and here’s the key phrase, in the courts of God. Not in the courts of the world, not in the courts of man, in God’s eyes, they will flourish. In God’s judgment, they will flourish. The world may not see your growth in humility, in gentleness, in love, in holiness, in patience, in kindness, in all the virtues of the Christian life, all the fruits of the Spirit. The world has no value for those things. You will not flourish in their court. but the righteous will flourish in the court of God.

Number three, they will yield fruit in old age. The righteous, the tree planted by God, in old age they will bear fruit. The righteous will continue growing and being fruitful for God even when they’re old. The life of a Christian doesn’t reach a plateau or a ceiling. You don’t reach a point where that’s just as good as it gets. You continue to grow to be more and more like Christ and to get closer and closer to God. And you bear fruit in your life of living for God. And then you die. And it gets even better. You will live forever with him in glory. You will be like him because you will see him as he is. There is no downhill side to Christianity. It’s all uphill from here.

Number four, they shall be rich and fresh. This is speaking of a tree, and some of your versions may say green or like a sapling or something along those lines. The literal translation here is they will be fat and fresh. Talk about some pronouns. My pronouns are fat and fresh. Again, this is the analogy of a tree. the people of God, because they are planted in the house of God, and they are drinking from the rivers of eternal life found in Christ, they will always be satisfied. This is about ultimate satisfaction found in Christ.

Everything else in life that seems like it feeds you, that seems like it will gratify you, it will make you happy and fulfilled, and that’s really gonna make my life worth it. If it’s not God, it will leave you withered and dying. Only Christ will fill you to overflowing. You cannot exhaust the bounty of the riches of Christ. And what is the result of the full and fruitful life? The tree that’s been described here, that’s been planted in the house of God, and it flourishes like a palm tree, and it flourishes in the courts of God, and it yields fruit in its old age, and it will be rich and fresh.

What’s the result? Verse 15, to declare that Yahweh is upright. He is my rock. There is no unrighteousness in him. He is upright. He is a rock. He will not be moved. He is ultimately righteous. That is our God. And when we have a thankful and worshipful posture in our life, in our minds, in our attitudes, we will realize that ultimate satisfaction is only found in him.

This is why, verse one, it is good to give thanks to Yahweh and to sing his praises. Give thanks to God because it is good. It is right. It’s the right thing to do because when we know He is the source of all our blessings. So what is it that you give thanks for? Or more importantly, who is it that you give thanks to? And do you give thanks when He gives you everything that you ask for? Do you give thanks when your life is going well and you have everything you want? Or do you give thanks for all the blessings that you receive whether you know about it or not?

I’m going to close with this story from Charles Spurgeon as he brings out this point of thanking God for things we don’t even know about. Charles Spurgeon says this. You have heard perhaps of a Puritan who met his son each one of them traveling some 10 or 12 miles to meet the other. The son said to his father, father, I am thankful to God for a very remarkable providence that I have had on my journey here. My horse has stumbled three times with me and yet I am unhurt. The Puritan replied, my dear son, I have to thank God for an equally remarkable providence on my way to you. For my horse did not stumble all the way.

He continues, if we happen to be in an accident by railway, we feel so grateful that our limbs are not broken. But should we not be thankful when there is no accident? Is it not the better thing of the two? If you were to fall into poverty and someone were to restore you to your former position, you would be very grateful. Should you not be grateful that you have not fallen into poverty in the first place? Bless God for his unknown benefits. Extol him for favors that you do not see. Always giving thanks to God for all things. Thank God for all the great things he has done. Thank God for all the benefits in your life that you can see and thank God for his unknown benefits.

Think of that this Thanksgiving season, as we often recall the things we’re thankful for. Try to think about the things you don’t often see. The car ride that you didn’t get in an accident in. Maybe if you’re traveling by plane, the plane that made it safely. The things we take for granted every day that are blessings from God because of the way they turned out. Thank God for His unknown benefits. If you do not know Christ as your Savior, you need to come to Him today. Come and confess your sin and cry out to Him for salvation. And if you’re in Christ already, praise God for all of His blessings. but most especially for his blessing of salvation. Because it is good to give thanks to Yahweh and to sing praises to your name, O Most High.

Let’s stand, if you are able, and close in a word of prayer this evening. Our Father in heaven, we are humbled by your word by a passage as great as Psalm 92. We know that it is good to give you thanks, to praise your name, to declare your loving kindness and your faithfulness, and to worship you. We’ve come here this evening to do just that, and we pray that you would mold and shape our lives because of our worship. that this attitude of thankfulness and humility, and ultimately finding our desires and happiness in you, that this would go with us as we leave here tonight. As we go through these holidays this season, we would remember not only the things that we see that you give us, but even your unknown benefits. God, we thank you. We thank you for who you are. We thank you for what you have made us to be in your children. We thank you for the benefits and blessings you will perform for us in the future. We pray that as we leave here tonight, we would just give you all the glory. We pray all these things in Christ’s precious name. Amen.