"Gratitude for God's Greatness" - 2 Samuel 7:18-29

What can you learn from looking closely at David's gratitude for God's greatness?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Oh, well, Cedar Street, I love you so, so very much. It's my joy to be with you here this morning. And as we get closer and closer to Easter, I know everybody's schedule is starting to bottleneck. There's a lot happening, but I'm just grateful that we could just sit at the feet of Jesus right now. My prayer would be that God would clear out any distractions that we have, any pressures or things that have to be done. And let's just be present with the Lord as we worship and we seek Him in His Word today. And that word worship is really important. We talked about this last week, and so today's kind of a uh maybe a sequel or a conclusion to what we looked at last week. We're in a sermon series, by the way, if you're visiting for the first time, we're in the book of 2 Samuel. You can see on the screen the title of our series is Faithful and Flawed. As we look at the life of King David, a man after a great faith, a man of great faith who ran after God's own heart, but also a man of great flaws who ran after God's amazing grace. And we all we see each week we've looked at the things that David has done that shows us what it means to go after the heart of God, but also how he is a portrait that constantly points us to King Jesus, who is who we really need in our lives. Last week we talked about worship. What is true worship? Last week I said when I say the word worship, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? I know most people think of songs and a service and all those things are part of worship. But last week we looked at true worship. What it is to know who God is, to come into his presence, and to recognize and enjoy him and celebrate who God is in a personal relationship with him. I said to the lost, to those that don't know God, worship sounds like a command to appease an insecure God. I'll be honest, I've heard atheists say this. I know before I was a Christian, I myself didn't fully understand this. When you see the commands over and over in Scripture to come and worship God, if you don't know God, you think to yourself, why is God calling people and commanding them to tell them how great he is? Is he insecure? And the answer is anyone that would say that doesn't know God. Here's what we said last week: worship is not an obligation to appease God, it's an invitation to enjoy God. In fact, that's the whole goal of life is to glorify God and enjoy God forever. That's what we're called to do. That's what worship is. Worship is to see the greatness of God and enjoy being in the presence of that greatness and then call out how great that greatness really is. If it's hard to worship, it's because our view of God is not as clear as it should be. And all of you know this. You're wired for worship. It may not be God that you're worshiping, but you're wired for worship. There are things that make your heart move. For those of you that love sports, you'll pay hundreds of dollars to attend or even live stream an important sporting event so that you can see athletic greatness and cheer and call it out when you see it. Some of you maybe enjoy art and you'll go to an art exhibit, or you enjoy musicians and you'll pay hundreds of dollars to get as close to the front as you can as your favorite musician is singing in a big concert and you'll you'll celebrate and you'll cheer, being in the presence of the great gift that person has. All of that is a reflection of God. Every gift that we have, if you're a great singer, a great artist, a great athlete, maybe you're a great parent and you have beautiful children and God has given that to you as a gift, all of that is an echo and a shadow that points to God. The problem because of our sin is we worship the gift and not the giver. Part of our goal is we need to recognize that every good and perfect gift comes from above, and we got to get clear about who the giver is. Because the clearer that you can see who God is, the more natural that worship is going to be in your life. You know, for some people that church is like a punishment. Getting up on Sunday morning and coming to church almost feels like taking medication. Be honest. Right? I remember a time in my life when I did not know the Lord. And I remember thinking that church was an obligation, not a joy. Why did it shift for me? Forget that I'm a pastor for a minute, because before I'm a pastor, I'm a Christian. How did it shift for me? I can just tell you this. It shifted when I got clear on who God was. And I began to see his hand in my life. And I began to see Christianity not as a set of rules, but a real relationship with a God that loves me and has already taken care of my sins. And so if you're in this room and you're tired, if you're in this room and you feel like you've been dragged here, maybe some of you feel like you have. If you're in this room and you say worship is very difficult right now, and maybe you don't even know what worship is and you'd rather be somewhere else, maybe today's a day that you and I need to learn from King David. We need to learn to open our eyes to who God is and his greatness and what he has done for us. And when we see who he is and we see what he's done, the natural overflow of that is we're going to enjoy it and celebrate his greatness. In fact, that the title of our message this morning, as we look at uh 2 Samuel chapter 7, verses 18 through 29, our title is Gratitude for God's Greatness. Gratitude for God's Greatness. And listen, I want to say before we get to the big idea, I recognize that many of you came in this room today and you're dealing with heavy things. You're dealing with real pressures, real struggles, real grief, real frustration. I don't want to belittle that at all. But we need to see the greatness of God in comparison to the problems that we have. David's going to help us do that today. So what's our big idea as we look at 2 Samuel 7, verses 18 through 29? Here it is in one sentence. David's prayer of praise demonstrates a genuine heart of gratitude for God's supreme greatness. David's prayer of praise demonstrates a genuine heart of gratitude for God's supreme greatness. So if you want to know more about how we can have more gratitude and worship for the greatness of God, join me by turning to the book of 2 Samuel. 2 Samuel, we're going to start in chapter 7 and in verse 18 all the way to verse 29. If you're new to the Bible, it's after 1 Samuel, it's before 1 Kings. If you don't have a Bible, that's okay. Grab the Pew Bible in front of you or beside you. We're on page 306 in your Pew Bible. And if you would stand at this time, if you're able, out of the reverence of the reading of God's holy, infallible, inerrant, and fully sufficient word. Again, we're in 2 Samuel 7. We're going to start in verse 18 and work our way through the end of the chapter in verse 29. Hear God's word to us, starting in verse 18. It says, Then King David went in and sat before the Lord and said, Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house that you have brought me thus far? And yet this is a small thing in your eyes, O Lord God. You have spoken also of your servant's house for a great while to come, and this is instruction for mankind, O Lord God. And what more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O Lord God, because of your promise and according to your own heart you have brought about all this greatness to make your servant know it. Therefore you are great, O Lord God, for there is none like you, and there is no God beside you, according to all that we have heard with our ears, and who is like your people Israel, the one nation on earth whom God went to redeem to be his people, making himself a name and doing for them great and awesome things by driving out before your people whom you redeemed for yourself from Egypt, a nation and its gods. And you established for yourself your people Israel to be your people forever. And you, O Lord, became their God. And now, O Lord God, confirm forever the word that you have spoken concerning your servant and concerning his house, and do as you have spoken, and your name will be magnified forever, saying, The Lord of hosts is God over Israel, and the house of your servant David will be established before you. For you, O Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, have made this revelation to your servant, saying, I will build you a house. Therefore, your servant has found courage to pray this prayer to you. And now, O Lord God, you are God, and your words are true, and you have promised this good thing to your servant. Now, therefore, it may it please you to bless the house of your servant, so that it may continue forever before you, for you, O Lord God, have spoken, and with your blessing shall the house of your servant be blessed forever. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let's pray. Oh Lord, we have so much to learn. We have so much to learn about who you really are. We have so much to learn about what you are really doing in our lives right now. But Lord, I'm thankful that we have teachers. First and foremost, I thank you that we have your word and your Holy Spirit who lives inside of us to open our eyes to understand it. But I also thank you for human teachers like King David. We know that he's flawed, but he certainly is faithful and seeking after your heart. And we need a guide today. Help us as we walk through this, Lord, to learn how it is to have true gratitude for your greatness, to be truly in worship, recognizing that our problems are real, but you are infinitely greater than anything that we're dealing with. And you are at work in our lives. Be with us right now, I pray, in Jesus' name, and God's people said. Amen. So I recognize as I look around, there are some of you visiting here for the first time, and people are kind of coming and going. So to get everybody on the same page, we are now in the fourth week of this series. If you've never read 2 Samuel, 2 Samuel really the central figure throughout the entire book is King David. And King David teaches us a lot. Again, the title of the series is Faithful and Flawed. We're going to see his faith, and certainly in a couple weeks, we're going to see that it takes a turn for the worse, and we're going to see a lot more of his flaws. However, so far we've seen that he finally gets a chance to take the throne of Israel that was promised to him many, many years before when he was a shepherd boy out in the field. And he takes over the throne of Israel and he begins to establish his reign. And last week we saw one important thing that he had to do was he had to take the Ark of the Covenant and bring it into the capital city of Jerusalem. And we learned last week the Ark of the Covenant, okay, this wood storage chest that had the Ten Commandments and the budding rod of Aaron and Mana, it was representing the holy presence of God. And in the tabernacle, that the Ark of the Covenant was in the deepest part of the tabernacle, the Holy of Holies, and nobody could go there except the high priest, and he could only go there once a year to make atonement for the people. And so it represents the sanctity and the holiness and the set apartness of the presence of God that you and I cannot come directly into the presence of God on our own terms, because we are not holy. Yet I said at the end of the message last week: if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you have been made holy by what he has done for you. By the shedding of his blood, living perfectly and dying sacrificially and rising supernaturally. When you put your faith in King Jesus, you are covered in his blood, and you can go boldly to the throne of grace. That does not make God any less holy. It just means God has done that for you and his son. We call that amazing grace. And that's what we talked about last week. Well, now we we shift into chapter 7, and in chapter 7, David is establishing his reign, and David is moving into this beautiful physical house as he begins to reign as king over Israel, and he says that he wants to build God a house. He said, Man, I get to live in this house, but God has been, the presence of God has been dwelling in a tabernacle and in this wood storage chest. And you know, I want to build a temple for God. And you know, it's a God-honoring desire that he had. All right, and in that God-honoring desire, he says to God, I want to build you a house, but it through the prophet Nathan, it goes the exact opposite direction. God says to David, You're not gonna build my house. Your son, that you don't yet know his name, he's gonna build my house. But David, not only are you not gonna build me a house, I'm gonna build you a house. And not just the physical one, a spiritual one. I'm going to establish your house forever, meaning that through King David, through his lineage and through his bloodline, would come the promised Messiah, the ultimate King, King Jesus. He makes this promise to David that his kingdom will live forever. And David is astounded at this promise. And he responds, the only way a person who fully understands it could or should respond, and he responded with gratitude, and he responded with worship. And as we watch him worship God, I'm gonna do my best to show you how this applies to wherever you're at in your life right now, how you and I can learn and respond in the same way with a heart of gratitude and worship towards the greatness of God. So I want to jump right in as we look first. I want to look at his at how he responds in praise to God's character, his covenant, and his commitment. So we'll start number one. David genuinely praised God's great character. Now I get this from verses 18 through 22, but in the essence of time, we're gonna hit some key words. So look with me at verse 21. Keep your Bibles open. If you're a note taker, I'll tell you where to underline. All right, in verse 21, look what it says. It says, Because of your promise and according to your heart, you have brought about this greatness to make your servant know it. Therefore you are great, O Lord God, for there is none like you, and there is no God beside you according to all that we have heard with our ears. Now again, here's the context. David is establishing his reign. The Ark of the Covenant is in Jerusalem. David is establishing his physical house. He's moving in, he's establishing the reign that he's gonna have over all Israel. And he wants to build a house for God, but God says, No, your son's gonna take care of that. I'm building you a spiritual house. Your lineage will be a beeline all the way to the Messiah, and we will, your kingdom will last forever. And this is how he's responding. Before he says anything about what God does, he recognizes the character of God. In verses 21 through 22, he mentions your promise, your own heart, you are great. There is none like you, there is no God beside you. And right there is the key to worship. Right there, you and I have got to understand who we're dealing with when we are seeking to worship God. We need to recognize that there is none like him. He is unsurpassed. He is the eternal creator, he is the eternal sustainer, he is the eternal redeemer. He knows all things. He's at all places at one time. He can do all things whenever he wants. This is who God is. There's only one represented in three persons Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One God, three persons. He is the God above all gods, he's the name above all names, and he's the one we address when we come to his house for worship. We need to know who we're dealing with. He's not a small God. But we make him out to be small all the time. We don't recognize the person that we're talking to. That's who he is. Now, what has he done? Before I can even speak to anything that he's individually done in each of your lives, I can say this is true for all of us. Number one, he created you. He created you to be unique and different from every other person who's ever walked the face of the earth. And he is sustaining you. It's funny, all the atheists in the world that attack God and say there is no God don't recognize that it's God Himself who is holding them together. All right? And he offers redemption, complete and total forgiveness of sins through the life and the death and the resurrection of his son. And he is a promise maker and he is a promise keeper. Alright? I want to say this. As you hold a Bible in your hand, there's nothing like it. Alright? It's written over the course of 1,500 years by more than 40 different authors on three different continents in three different original languages, all pointing to one person who fulfills all the promises of God with yes and amen. And his name is Jesus. It is the most historically documented thing that has ever happened that the God would make this many promises, and yet they're all uniquely fulfilled in Christ. This is the God that we worship. And yet, a lot of times we come to a place in our lives where our problems seem so big that our God begins to seem so small. Now, I don't want to minimize problems. I have them, you have them, they're real, and we don't deal with them by pretending they don't exist. There are some of you in this room that walked in here today with real physical problems. For some of you, it was hard to get out of your bed this morning. For some of you, you're dealing with real emotional problems, broken relationships, hardship. Some of you know that we're getting towards the end of the month and you don't know how you're gonna pay your rent. I get it. These things are real, it's significant. But that doesn't mean that God is smaller than any problem that you have. Some of us need, we we need to look at how God is uniquely worshiped and recognize that God is always bigger. No matter what you're dealing with, he's always bigger, and yet he is, he humbles himself to be with each of you uniquely in your problems. We also don't want to think that God is so big that he can't be right there with us when we need him the most. He's gonna be right there with us when we pray. He's gonna be right there with us when we seek him. He knows every hair on our head, he knows every tremble in our heart, he knows everything about you. You can trust him because his character is unmatched. This is the God we serve. This is the God that David knew. Why could David praise him in the palace? Because he met him in the sheep pasture. And all those years of wandering in the wilderness with the sheep and fighting them against lions, and all the things that he went with, and then in the years that he was serving under King Saul and he was running for his life and hiding in caves over and over and over again. He learned who God was and he learned how God ministered in his life, and once he got a clear view of who God was, when he finally is in a place of glory, which is now he's taking the throne of Israel, and this is the high point of his reign, he knows where all the blessing comes from. It comes from God. You know, when things are going bad, sometimes we reach out for God. When things are going really well, we think we're the ones that made it happen. You ever notice that? Praise is really hard. There's something inside the flesh that when things go well, we say, I'm the one that made that happen. No, we need to remember in the pasture when he meets us in a time of great need, that he's also the one with us in the palace when things are going really well. David teaches us how to genuinely praise God because of his great character. So let me just say before we look at the next point, take a look at where you're at right now. Forget the problem. All right? Forget what it is that you may be struggling with at this moment. Can you think of everything that God has done in your life to get you right where you are right now? Can you see his fingerprints on everything? Can you see how he's been patient with you? Can you see how he has strengthened you? Can you see the amazing grace that he's poured all over you? Can you see the way that he's walking with you at this moment and drawing you into more intimacy with him? He wants to grow a greater relationship with you. Can you see that? Maybe if you can't, the next prayer is, God, I can't see, but I want to. Show me where you're at. Where's where's God in all this? That's a question that we should be asking no matter what we're wrestling with. David could see the fingerprints of God. He called out in praise because of God's great character. But I want to look number two. David genuinely praised not just God's great character, but also God's great covenant. As you look at verses 23 through 24, all right, this is God's plan of salvation that began through the nation of Israel. It says, And who is like your people Israel? The one nation on earth whom God went to redeem to be his people, making himself a name and doing for them great and awesome things by driving out before your people whom you redeemed for yourself from Egypt, a nation and its gods, and you established for yourself your people, Israel, to be your people. Forever, and you, O Lord, became their God. This is about the people of God, the redemption of God, the name of God, the work of God, and the plan of God. He is good in all that he does. Now let me stop for a moment. I want to pretend for a second that you've never read the Bible because in every church there's people coming in for the first time that have never held a Bible. I didn't hold one until my late twenties. If you're here and that's you, that you're in a good place. Let me just say this. The greatest problem that you and I have is sin that causes separation with God. You're born that way. None of us are born in fellowship with God. We're born in separation because of the sin of Adam and Eve. But God made a promise after Adam and Eve had sinned. He said in Genesis chapter 3, verse 15, there would be a seed of the woman, a promised Messiah who would come and crush the head of Satan, defeating Sinhell in the grave. And from Genesis 3.15, that plan begins to unfold. And how is it that God was going to bring his Messiah into the world? Well, in Genesis chapter 12, we made a man of faith named Abraham, and God makes a promise to Abraham. And God says, I am going to make you great, and through you all the other nations of the earth will be blessed. I want you to hear this. It's not that God was playing favorites. God has a desire for all tribes, all tongues, all nations to be gathered around his throne. And yet for the plan to unfold, he chose one person, that's Abraham. And out of Abraham, he chose one nation, the lineage of Abraham. Abraham had a son named Isaac, who had a son named Jacob. Jacob was renamed Israel and had twelve sons who become the twelve tribes. And this nation begins to unfold in a special covenant. As Moses went up on the mountaintop to Mount Sinai and came down with the Ten Commandments, they began to establish this covenant that they could have a relationship with God. They were called apart from the rest of the world. And David is saying, You have established this plan. You said you were going to call the people unto yourself and you have. You said you were going to make me king and you have. You said you were going to work on behalf of your people and you have. You are a covenant keeper. Now, why is that good news? We know what David doesn't know. We know how the story ends. All right, that was the old covenant, a covenant built on the laws of Moses. Jesus came and fulfilled the law, and he gives us a new covenant. A covenant where you and I can have a personal relationship with God because of the shed blood and the sacrificed body of Jesus. You know, we're going to have a Good Friday communion service here in a few weeks, right? And when we whenever we practice communion, we need to recognize this is the new and the everlasting and the final covenant. There's not another covenant that God is going to make with people. This is it. Okay, this is the final boat. Jesus holds up the bread. He says, This is my body. And then he holds up the cup and he says, This is my blood. And he says, This is the blood of the new and the everlasting covenant which has been shed for you so that sins may be forgiven. And what he's saying is, from this point on into eternity, if you want a relationship with God, all you must do is repent of your sins and place your total trust in me because I offer that complete and total forgiveness. I have fulfilled the law, I have lived righteously, I've died sacrificially, I've rose supernaturally, and you just need to trust and put your faith in me. That's the covenant that we live in today, if you're a follower of Jesus Christ. Can I say that covenant is worthy of praise? What if we still lived in the old covenant and we were still trying to live to a standard that we could never meet, and we had altars behind the church where we're constantly sacrificing animals and shedding blood for our sins over and over. There'd be no end to the amount of animals that would be killed over and over and over because by our nature we are not capable of meeting the perfect standard of God that is required. That's why Jesus lived it for us. And we receive it as a gift. We turn away from our sinful nature, we turn towards Christ and we put our trust in Him and we walk with Him every day. And if you know today that you have a relationship with God and you cannot lose what you did not earn, but you simply put your trust in Jesus, you ought to think about that covenant every time you look at that cross and thank God and praise him for it. He is worthy of our praise. David recognized the plan of God unfolding and he praised God for it. That's number two. David genuinely praised God's great covenant. Third and finally, David genuinely praised God's great commitment. God's got unsurpassed character, he makes unsurpassed promises, and he also is a God that makes a commitment and he sticks with it. Now, if you look at verses 25 through 29, skip to verse 28. All right, here's what he says. And now, O Lord God, you are God, and your words are true, and you have promised this good thing to your servant. Now, therefore, may it please you to bless the house of your servant so that it may continue forever before you. For you, O Lord God, have spoken, and with your blessings shall the house of your servant be blessed forever. He's saying, God, your words are true, your promises are kept, your blessings are abundant, and your commitment lasts forever. God sticks with us from beginning, middle, and end. Nothing in the world's like that right now. I don't know about you, but I think we live in a time right now where it is good and right to say, don't trust almost anything that you see, anything that you read, or anything that you hear. People are committed to nothing. Really? We have less commitment to things today than we ever have before. And then you ask the question, who can you trust? You know the answer? You can trust God. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. He never changes. There is not one speck of evil or sin in him. He desires your greatest good for his greatest glory. I need a God who never changes. Because I change all the time. I know my own heart. It is wicked and deceitful. I can, I can, uh, oh, we can make ourselves believe so many different things. Do you know that you you can't tell somebody who you really are because you don't even know yourself who you really are? Only God truly knows you. And God says, I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. Yes, God is a God of discipline. All right? God is not a God who smiles at sin. He deals with sin. We have consequences here on planet Earth for things that we do. Grace does not mean forgiveness does not mean no consequences. But it does mean that he always seeks our greatest good and he's with us no matter what. And David recognized when you say something, God, take it to the bank. It is true. Oh gosh, I remember my journey of salvation. I remember my my Bible, my first Bible sitting on a coffee table. And I remember I remember taking a year, even after I got saved, a full year of my life, Googling, can you trust the Bible? Is the Bible true? Is the Bible full of contradictions? There are plenty of people who attack the Bible every day. And you know what's funny? They live and they die, and the Bible keeps carrying on like an unstoppable freight train. But I just remember one day I came in from a from I was swimming at an apartment complex swimming pool, and I came into my apartment, and I don't know what it was that day. But that particular day the Holy Spirit said, You have enough information. You know this is my word. And I grabbed my first Bible, my my uh, it was an NIV study Bible, and on the inside cover I wrote, This day I've not only surrendered to Jesus, but now I surrender to the full authority of his word, and I will do what it says the rest of my life with the help of God. I did not know what he was going to do with me next. To this day, when people call me pastor, I'm thinking, Who are you talking about? Uh I just, God is full of surprises. But I know this you can trust his word. You can trust his word. Look at everything he's done up until this point, all the promises of scripture that he's kept. So for the few promises in Scripture that have yet to be fulfilled, you think we can trust that God's going to bring them to completion? You better believe it. You ought to be thinking about those promises. You ought to be meditating on those. Everybody knows around here knows I love talking about heaven. You know why? Heaven is God's fulfilled promises. And I think about them now as if I've already had them. Paul says, set your mind on things above, not on things of the earth, because these are the things that are promised. And if God is that faithful, it is as if we already have them. The Bible says you are already seated in heavenly places. Your reservation has already been made. We just have a little more growing to do before we get there. We have a little more transforming to do. God is still working on your soul. You're becoming a little bit more like Christ. And he'll finish what he started. That's who God is. So let me ask this before we sum it up. With something you really want God to do that he's not yet done. Can you just pause and praise him for what he's already done? Do you know how quickly we forget every blessing that God has already poured out on our life? We are a forgetful people. I go back to journals that I had written wrote even last year, and I read them and I'm like, I don't remember that. It was less than a year ago, and I'm looking at my journals going, I don't I don't remember God doing that. We forget so quickly. So quickly. I mean, I was making a joke about this. Last month I had a bill, and I and the whole month I was like, I don't have enough money to pay this bill. I don't know how this is gonna work. And it's funny, I thought, I'm 45 years old. From the time I got saved all the way up until 45, I've never missed a bill once. And God's gonna bring me all this way, and then this one bill's gonna come, and God's gonna go, that's even bigger than me. I'm gonna be honest with you. And that's even better. Now my hands are tight on this one. I might help you if I could, but are you serious? We forget all that he's done. Whatever you're worried about right now, what has he done to get you where you are? Is he gonna take you nine-tenths of the way and just let go? That's not who God is. So as you're waiting for God to move in this season of your life, maybe today is just today to praise him for all the things he's done to bring you to this point. Gosh, we forget so quickly. Let me sum this up. As the great Charles Spurgeon said, let me make a beeline to Calvary. We need to get a good view of the cross. Let me sum it up here. David's praise of God's greatness points us to genuinely praise Jesus, whose great character, covenant, and commitment secured eternal salvation. I'll read it again. David's praise of God's greatness points us genuinely to praise Jesus, whose great character, covenant, and commitment secured eternal salvation. Now I could share a bunch of different passages. I'll share one that I love. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 2 says this. It says, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. What does this say about the character, the covenant, and the commitment of Jesus? Well, first of all, the character. He's going to finish what he started. He who began a good work in you, he's going to see it to the very end. He's not going to take you nine-tenths of the way and leave you alone. He's going to finish what he started because that's his character. What about the covenant? Again, he reunites us with God through his perfect life, his sacrificial death, his supernatural resurrection. He did everything necessary for us to be saved and his commitment. He could have given up, but he didn't. What does it say in this passage? For the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God, meaning in the Garden of Gethsemane, when he prayed, and he said, If it be possible, let this cup pass for me. And he knew the Father said no. He responded, Nevertheless, not my not my will but yours be done. And what kept him on that cross? The joy that was set before him. What's his joy? It's his bride. It's the church. It's his love for you. Oh, if each one of you for five minutes could taste and experience the fullness of his love for you. Can I say this? When you meet him, you are gonna feel like you are his favorite. He's gonna love you like you're the only one on planet earth. You'll know that he feels the exact same way about the person next to you, but his love for you is special. It's unique to who you are, it's not generic. God didn't go to a generic cross and he didn't deny, he didn't die for generic sins. He went to a cross on Calvary and He took specific punishment for your specific sins so that you could be with Him forever. That's the commitment that He made. And if He's that committed to us, we should recognize that commitment and continue to worship Him. Maybe your worship needs to be bigger than your problems today because God is. So I want to pray. And then we're gonna have a time of invitation. This is a time for you to reflect. This is a time for you to think, Lord, do I recognize all the things that you've done in my life? Can I be more grateful and more praise to you for what it is that you have done? And then after we have a time of invitation, Miss Tamar's gonna come down and we're gonna talk more about a way that we can reach out to other people who do not yet know Jesus and cannot worship him the way that we do because they've not yet encountered his greatness. So pray with me right now. Lord, I feel completely and totally inadequate to proclaim your greatness. You are great whether I'm tongue-tied or not. You are who you say you are. You are the Alpha and the Omega. You are the beginning and the end. You are the same yesterday, today, and forever. You are a creator, sustainer, and redeemer. You are a promise keeper and a promise maker. You are the ones that you are the one that made a covenant and fulfilled a covenant. You are the one that did everything necessary for us to be saved. You are working in our lives. You are pouring out your grace. You're helping us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. You're working all things together for good for those that love you and are called according to your purpose. You are good, you do good, and you work all things together for good, Lord. We need you, and we need a clear view of who you are. So, in this invitation, open our eyes, Lord. Open our eyes to see you. Open our eyes to recognize all that you have done for us. And open our lips that our mouths may declare your praise. In Jesus' name.

unknown 38:24

Amen.