It Is Good to Give Thanks

Dannah Gresh: Christians have thousands of reasons to thank the Lord. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth shares one of them.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: If God hadn't kept the sun, moon, and stars in the sky, kept the earth on its axis, kept all those planets and sun and all the things doing what God ordained them to do, we would not be here another day. God has been faithful one more day.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Lies Women Believe, for December 4, 2023. I'm Dannah Gresh. 

We're experiencing a lot of things in the world that are not good today. Maybe you're facing your own personal struggle, or you're concerned about the thoughts of an international crisis right now.

In this imperfect world, evil shouldn't surprise us. In fact, according to God's Word, we still have a lot of reasons to give thanks. Even when we observe the brokenness around us. Nancy is about to share why that is as she begins a series this week on Psalm 92. 

Nancy: Well, throughout the month of December, we're going to be talking about what it means to be fruitful in every season of our lives. I want to start this theme by turning to a passage of Scripture today that I was first drawn to several months ago as I was getting ready to turn sixty-five. 

So if you've got your Bible with you, I hope you do, or you can scroll to it on your phone, let me invite you to open to Psalm 92. 

I was drawn to this psalm because I wanted to have God's perspective on getting older, God's perspective on aging. This is one of the beautiful passages in Scripture that addresses that. We're going to spend the next week soaking in this passage. I want to invite you to do the same, to be reading the Scripture, the psalm, maybe memorizing it, as I have over these last months. I find myself going to sleep at night reciting this psalm, waking up in the morning, and sometimes during the night reciting this psalm. It has become such a sweet encouragement to my heart over these past months, and I hope will be to yours as well, this week as we soak in Psalm 92. 

Now as we open to Psalm 92, you'll see that in your Bible it has a title, sometimes that's called a “superscription,” words that are written at the top of the passage. In the CSB that I'm using (the Christian Standard Version) the title at the top of Psalm 92 is “God's Love, and Faithfulness.” You'll see this theme emphasized particularly in verse 2. It's a theme that you will see all through the Scripture: God's love and faithfulness. 

That's one of the things we're going to talk about, whether you're young, or you're middle aged, or you're getting older, or maybe you're very old. God's love and God's faithfulness are something that we cannot do without. 

Then we see at the top of this psalm, that in my Bible says, “A Psalm. A song for the Sabbath day.” We're not told who authored this psalm, we just don't know. But we do know that it was a song for the Sabbath day. It's the only psalm in the whole 150 psalms of Scripture that has that title: “A Song for the Sabbath day.” 

You remember that in the Old Testament, the Sabbath was a part of a rhythm that God established, beginning at creation. He worked six days creating the world, and then on the seventh day He rested. 

When the Israelites became a nation, God commanded them to observe a weekly Sabbath. One day out of every seven, the seventh day of the week, was a day of rest from their work. It was also a day of corporate worship, focusing their corporate attention on who God is. It was a celebration of the faithfulness of God in their lives. 

Now, since the founding of the Church in the New Testament, all these years since, God's people have set aside the first day of the week as what we call the “Lord's Day.” And as one commentator said, speaking about this title, the Sabbath, the Lord's Day was not intended to be a burden to us but a blessing. 

And so, as we think about how we gather together corporately, and we celebrate God's love and His faithfulness, this psalm gives us some words to help do that. I'm going to read the psalm, and then today and over these next several days, we're going to just look at it a verse, a phrase, a paragraph, at a time and see where it takes us. Psalm 92.

It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
to sing praise to your name, Most High,
to declare your faithful love in the morning
and your faithfulness at night,
with a ten-stringed harp
and the music of a lyre.

For you have made me rejoice, Lord,
by what you have done;
I will shout for joy
because of the works of your hands.
How magnificent are your works, Lord,
how profound your thoughts!

A stupid person does not know,
a fool does not understand this:
though the wicked sprout like grass
and all evildoers flourish,
they will be eternally destroyed.

But you, Lord, are exalted forever.

For indeed, Lord, your enemies—
indeed, your enemies will perish;
all evildoers will be scattered.
You have lifted up my horn
like that of a wild ox;
I have been anointed with the finest oil.
[Or as most of your translations will read, “I’ve been anointed with fresh oil.”]

My eyes look at my enemies;
when evildoers rise against me,
my ears hear them.

The righteous thrive like a palm tree
and grow like a cedar tree in Lebanon.
Planted in the house of the Lord,
they thrive in the courts of our God.
They will still bear fruit in old age,
healthy and green,
to declare, “The Lord is just;
he is my rock,
and there is no unrighteousness in him.” (vv. 1–15)

Oh Father, as we open the Scripture, would You open our hearts, open our ears, open our minds to receive to understand and to respond to what You have to say to us through Your holy and precious Word, in whatever season of life. Would You show us how we can be fruitful for the glory and the praise of Your name. We pray it, amen.

Verse 1, it is good to give thanks to the Lord. The first time we see that word “good” in the Scripture, you remember where it is, the very first page of the Bible, Genesis chapter 1. Seven times in the creation account we read, “And God looked at what He had made, and He saw that it was good.” Seven times in Genesis chapter 1, God saw that it was good. 

And yet, there's so many things in this world and in our surroundings that are not good. As we're recording this series, our world is in the throes of an epic crisis in the Middle East. And by the time this program airs, there will be other headlines, perhaps beyond that consuming our attention, maybe having to do with crime, maybe having to do with the economy, disasters in our world, corrupt leaders in many of our nations and in the political realm. It may be the bad news is not so much in the world out there that's consuming your attention, maybe it's in your own life. Maybe it's in your family, people that are close to you that are suffering or friends that are going through some bad news. 

I received a text from a friend recently whose daughter was getting ready to have a baby. That daughter is in the middle of massive turmoil in her marriage. It's not good. My friend wrote and is dealing with this with her daughter and her soon to be grandchild and not good news. 

Thinking of another text I got recently from a friend, a Revive Our Hearts supporter whose business is in the middle of a massive lawsuit warding off libelous claims against their company. It is not good news right now, for that family and that business. 

And we live in a world of turmoil, instability, things are not as they should be, they are not good. But under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Psalmist gives us a song to sing in a world that has lots of bad news.

On the day that was set apart for corporate worship, the Psalmist causes us to pause, to look up to recalibrate our perspective and He tells us what is good. What is good? Verse one, Psalm 92, it is good to give thanks to the Lord.

We know through all of Scripture that God is good. Even when everything else around us seems to be bad, God is good, and it is a good thing to give thanks to the Lord. That is good. 

Now, over the first five verses, we're going to see some teaching about the object of our thanksgiving and praise, the theme of our praise and the expression of our praise. How do we express praise and thanks to the Lord? I love that He starts here with the value of praise and thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a good thing. Praise to the Lord is a good thing. It's valuable; it's precious; it's worthwhile. It is good to give thanks to the Lord. 

And then we see as we continue in verse 1, the object of our praise. It is good to give thanks not just to some general, cosmic, something-out-there nebulous something; but it is good to give thanks to the Lord, to Yahweh, the self-existent One, who is the Creator of everything that is, who is the Ruler, the sovereign and the providential God of the universe and of time past and time present, and time to come for all of eternity. 

He is the Lord; we give our thanks to Him. It is good to sing praise to Your name, Most High. Elyon, the Most High God. He is exalted. He is above every person, every circumstance, every nation, every problem, every sin. He is above everything. He is the God Most High. We give thanks to the Lord. We praise the Lord, the Most High God. That is the object of our praise. 

And then we see as we continue into verse 2 the theme of our praise. “It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praise to Your name, Most High,” to declare what? “Your faithful love in the morning and Your faithfulness at night,” the theme of our praise. 

Now, depending on which translation you're using, it may say Your faithful love as it does in the CSB here. It may say Your faithfulness or Your lovingkindness. That's that really important word in Hebrew: hesed—the covenant-keeping, steadfast love of the Lord. It is a good thing to declare Your faithful love when we're giving thanks. 

When we're singing praise, we have lots of things to thank the Lord for. It's appropriate to thank Him for those things. But we start by thanking Him for His covenant-keeping love. The love of God is not based on who we are, or what we've done, or what we could do for God, or how we perform for Him. He loves us because He is a faithful, covenant-keeping God. And His lovingkindness to us never ceases. So, we start the theme of our praise, the faithful love of God. 

 

Then His faithfulness: the God who not only saves us by His covenant-keeping love, but who keeps us saved, who keeps us when we cannot keep ourselves. We give thanks to the Lord for His faithful love and for His faithfulness. 

And then as we continue in these first few verses of Psalm 92, we see not only the object of our praise, and thanks, not only the theme of our praise, and thanks, but also the expression of our praise, and thanks. And the psalmist gives us some insight to other psalms throughout Scripture: how we are to praise the Lord and when we are to praise the Lord.

How? We are to give thanks and to praise the Lord in a variety of ways that we see. In verses 2 and 3, we are to praise the Lord with our voices. It says, “declare the faithful love and the faithfulness of God.” 

I’ve been thinking about that as I get up in the morning. I want to declare the love of God, the faithfulness of God, that means to speak the love of God, to speak the faithfulness of God, to declare it first to the Lord. “Lord, You are faithful. You are loving. You are kind. You are merciful. You never stop loving me. You never stop keeping me.” Declaring to the Lord thanks and praise for His steadfast love and faithfulness. 

But sometimes we need to declare it to ourselves. “Soul, you're upset. You're overwrought. You're anxious about this or that.” I need to remind my soul, remind myself, that God loves me, that God is faithful, no matter what is going on in this world or in my world this day. So we declare it to the Lord, we declare it to ourselves, and we declare it to others. 

Robert and I want to be declaring to each other and, and we're declaring to you today, and I want you to declare to others today: the Lord is loving, He is faithful, He is kind, He is merciful. We're declaring, and the more we speak the love and the faithfulness of God, the more we come to believe that it's true. We remind ourselves. 

We need those reminders because the world is piping itself into our heads and our hearts and our thinking all day long every day. We need the reminder that God is faithful, God is loving. God does not ever fail. We declare that with our tongues. We not only declare it with our words, but we sing praise to the Lord. This is another way we give thanks and praise the Lord. We sing. 

Now, this is appropriate for a psalm that was written for the Sabbath. I'm reminded when we go to church, we sing songs to the Lord. I love that, but you look around, and you find sometimes people aren't singing well. Maybe it's because they don't know the songs, or maybe, like me, they feel like they don't have a voice they really want other people to hear when they sing. But what a good thing it is when we come together for corporate worship, that we lift our voices to sing the praise of the Lord to worship Him with singing—celebrating His love and His faithfulness.

And then keeping on the how, here we're to do it not only with our voices but also with musical instruments—“with a ten-stringed harp and the music of a lyre,” verse 3 tells us. There are some in the history of the church who believed that the use of instruments and worship was only intended for the Old Testament people of God. And then when the New Testament came, the Church was to sing without instruments. 

I think that's a hard thing to prove. And there were some noted theologians who said that, but it's clear when we get to the book of Revelation, and we come to Revelation chapter 5, that the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders in heaven fell down before the Lamb, and each one had what? A harp. 

Psalm 92 anticipates that day of worship in heaven when the saints of God will have musical instruments. Revelation 5 says they sing a new song. What is that song? It's a song of the Lamb. It's the song of redemption. We sing it now as we gather for corporate worship; we sing it in our homes. We sing it from our own hearts to the Lord. But in anticipation of that day, eternity, where we will speak, declare, and sing the praise of the Lord forever. 

So, the expression of our praise: with our mouths, with our music, with instruments. But when are we to give thanks and praise to the Lord? 

Well, verse 2 tells us where to give thanks to the Lord, to declare His faithful love in the morning. In the morning, it is a good thing to start every day by declaring that God loves us, that He is faithful, that He has this covenant-keeping love that starts out our day and will undergird us throughout the day. In fact, He was up all night taking care of us, loving us, and being faithful. We declare that in the morning.

But we declare it also at night, to declare Your faithfulness at night. It's a good thing to end every day by declaring that God has been faithful to us for one more day. 

Don't take it for granted. If God hadn't kept the sun, moon, and stars in the sky, kept the earth on its axis, kept all those planets and sun and all the things doing what God ordained them to do, we would not be here another day. But God has been faithful as the Lord of Creation. As the Lord of nature as the Lord of our own hearts and lives, God has been faithful, no matter what has happened in our day. He has been faithful one more day. So we declare that in the morning; we declare it at night. 

I want to just say that it's a good thing to give thanks to the Lord all through the day and even as we awaken during the night. I think of that song many of us sing at times in our corporate worship, 

The sun comes up; it's a new day dawning.
It's time to sing your song again.
Whatever may pass, and whatever lies before me, 
Let me be singing when the evening comes. 

And what is His song we're going to be singing? 

Bless the Lord, oh my soul,
Oh, my soul, worship His holy name.
Sing like never before, oh, my soul.
I all worship Your holy name.
(“10,000 Reasons” by Matt Redman)

The steadfast love and the faithfulness of God are never ending. Our praise and our thanks should be never ending. Morning and night and all the time in between, all the way to the end of our earthly lives, and through all eternity.

My husband has a cousin. The Dourte family is very close and has multiple generations now. It's a huge family. They're a singing family. They’re a family that gives thanks and praises the Lord. One of Robert’s cousins, a man named Nevin Dourte, was a strong, healthy, sixty-six-year-old man who several months ago was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor. It's a total shock to this precious family that loves the Lord. They love to give thanks to the Lord. They love to praise the Lord. They’re worshipers of the Lord. They’re followers of Christ. The family gathered together and prayed, but within a couple of weeks, this precious man was in heaven. 

Robert and I live streamed the memorial service that was held at a Brethren in Christ Church in central Pennsylvania. It was a beautiful service. It was so Christ honoring with a lot of singing, a lot of Scripture. Then the congregation broke out into singing a song that I had never heard this arrangement before. It was deeply moving to me. Listening to that congregation, those friends, as family members singing to the Lord. I want you to listen to what they sang at the end of that service.

Song: "Mennonite Doxology" by Messiah University Choirs

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below.
Praise Him above, praise Him above, 
Praise Him above, ye heav’nly host.
Praise Him above, praise Him above,
Praise Him above ye heav’nly host.
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, amen.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, 
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, 
Hallelujah, amen.
Hallelujah, amen.
Hallelujah, amen.

Well, I gotta tell you, Robert and I were in tears as we watched and listened to that congregation, through their tears, grieving the loss of this loved one, but singing praise to the Lord. 

I tell you, I can't think of a better way to send someone you love on to their eternal home. In fact, I sent a link to that song to the music leader at our church, and I said, “Please have the congregation at our church learn to sing this song before my funeral.” Because that's how I want to go out. That's how I want to be sent out. I want the people of God praising, singing, thanking the Lord, for His love and His faithfulness. 

It's a good thing, a good thing, to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praise to His name, the Most High God. 

Even as we read this psalm and talk about the goodness and the faithfulness of God, praising and thanking Him, your world may not look good at all today. Maybe you're discouraged by the brokenness within, and the brokenness all around you in this fallen, messed up world. But I'll tell you what is good, and it's a good thing. It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praise to Your name Most High, to declare Your faithful love in the morning, and Your faithfulness at night. 

Oh Lord, how we worship You. We give You thanks for You are good. It is good to give thanks to You, to sing praise to You. We celebrate, we worship in the midst of whatever may be bringing tears to our eyes this day. 

The fact that You are the Lord, You are the God Most High, You can be trusted to write our story. You love us with a faithful, undying love. And You have always been faithful to Your people from generation to generation. And whatever we're going through now, You're not going to stop being faithful . . . from now through all of time. All of eternity we give You thanks and praise in Jesus’ name, amen.

Dannah: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has been giving us so many reasons for why we can praise the Lord no matter our circumstances. She’s shown us the importance as well as the when and how of giving thanks to Him. That is after all, part of what it looks like to bear fruit as believers in Christ.

Nancy: Our desire here at Revive Our Hearts is to help you be fruitful in every season of life. No matter your age where you live, we want to do all we can to help you thrive in Christ. 

One of the major highlights of this year was Mujer Verdadera ’23, our True Woman conference for Spanish-speaking women. More than 8,000 women from thirty-five different countries gathered in Guadalajara, Mexico, to hear messages on freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. Robin is a Revive Partner who lives in Texas. She was able to attend the conference in Guadalajara. She explained why she believes in Aviva Nuestros Corazones, and has been moved by the Lord to invest in that ministry each month. 

Robin: My heart is naturally drawn to Latin America because of where my daughter comes from and all the work that we did there through the years.

Nancy: Robin and her husband, who's now with the Lord, adopted their daughter from Guatemala. 

Robin: I think because I had been so involved in places like Honduras and Guatemala, and I understood to some degree the challenge of being a woman in those places, much less a woman who's striving to know the Lord, there can be a lot of challenges in that. And so, when Aviva Nuestros Corazones really began to bubble up and the Lord began to do so much, and I got to hear about the things that were happening, that just absolutely made my heart so happy. Then to know that Nancy's books and her teachings were all being translated and going out. Boy, I could not wait to hop on board to help with that. So yeah, that's just a great joy to my heart.

Nancy: I'm so thankful for Robin and many others like her who have said, “We see God's hand of blessing in what God's doing through Revive Our Hearts.” They see the fruit, and they want to be a part of it. They want to participate. How about you? Would you like to make an investment in what God is doing in the hearts of women around the world. We'd love to hear from you this month. And maybe it will absolutely make your heart happy, too.

Dannah: And don't forget that your donation between now and December 31 will be matched by a group of friends of Revive Our Hearts. It's a way of effectively doubling your gift. To make a donation, head to ReviveOurHearts.com, and click where it says donate. Be a part of what God's doing through this wonderful ministry. You can also call us at 1-800-569-5959. 

Nancy: Thank you so much for giving, and for praying. We need both more than you could possibly know. 

Dannah: We do. Now before you go, even though Advent season has just begun, I want to remind you that it's not too late to join our Advent Book Club. Visit our website ReviveOurHearts.com to get a copy of this year's selection, Born a Child and Yet a King: The Gospel in Carols. It is written by Nancy. 

Joining our Advent book club is one way you can join with like-hearted women to celebrate the baby who was born a child and yet a king. Head on over to ReviveOurHearts.com/AdventBookClub to get all the details and sign up. 

Do you find your joy in the Lord? Tomorrow Nancy will show us how our worship of the Lord leads us to true joy shall continue in our series on Psalm 92. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts. 

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is encouraging you to know true freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.
 

All Scripture is taken from the CSB.

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