Relative Thanks ~ Psalm 122

“…to give thanks to the name of the Lord.” Psalm 122:4b ESV

              Mankind’s dealing with the idea of God is curious indeed.  And never has this perplexing conundrum held more mental and spiritual acuity for me than after serving for many years upon foreign mission fields.  All humans are born with an innate desire to find God.  Yet when they do encounter the one true God and dislike His ways and laws, they will create a god of their liking.  It is a truth, unless humans are truly affected by the real, only, creator God, being changed at the heart level to love and adhere to His precepts and laws, they will alternately attempt to create a god that pleases them in their understanding and preferred lifestyle.  And in this delicate dance, the deity-human relationship becomes greatly muddled. 

Human seeks God.  Human dislikes the one true God he discovers. Human, in his limited mental and spiritual capacity, creates a god he can understand and process.  And since the one true God is spirit, man creates a physical image or idol that he can fully define and visually process.  And then man adores, worships, or sacrifices to the image or idol that his hands have created.  And then, in a practice that I continue to see every day on the mission field in which I currently live, man seeks to appease his created god.  And in one of the most severely twisted facets of this process, man turns religion into commerce.  Into a business. Into a bartering process.  For in this process, something must be done, or something must be given to their god in order to get what the worshipper desires.  Yes, at our core, us sinful, God-rejecting humans create commercial religion.  That is, seeing good works, good money, or good intentions given to a false god in hopes that he will, in return, give us what we want.

              Yet another enigma of the study of this religiosity is that it has not changed in the 4,000 years of recorded Biblical human spirituality.  We greatly desire to believe that somehow our modern generation has spiritually graduated from the base, heathen-like idolatry of the Old Testament.  We desire to believe that today, because we have more technology, progress, and gadgets galore, that our spiritual condition has advanced proportionally along with innovation.  Yet folks, hear this, the human spiritual condition has not advanced at all in those 4,000 years.  And thus, if you desire to see sinful Old Testament idolatry on display today, just look around with Holy Spirit-inspired eyes and you will easily see the same pattern.  Humans creating a god of their own understanding and then attempting to appease that god to get what they desire and crave in this world. Friends, this dog has been chasing its tail since the words, “In the beginning” were uttered. (Genesis 1:1)

              Psalm 122 finds King David penning a poem about the goodness of gathering in the house of the Lord.  Recall that all 12 tribes of Isreal were called by God to attend three mandatory feasts each year in Jerusalem.  And for most Israelites, that required travelling a great distance from their small villages to arrive at the tabernacle/temple of the Lord.  As you can imagine, after several days of hard walking, what a joy it would have been to crest the last mount and finally lay eyes upon the glory of God’s home.  That is, the structure that held the of the Ark of God, which symbolized the very presence of Almighty God among His chosen people, the Israelites.  And as David beautifully details the emotion and spirituality of this Israelite homecoming, he gets down to brass tacks about what should be the result of it all.  And, by today’s standards, it might surprise you.

              You see, the goal was not to travel all those miles to get something from God.  The goal was not to walk 25 miles over rough terrain to only beg God for what you needed or wanted.  The goal was not to leave your family for a week-long road trip to give God something that would so impress Him that He would now somehow be obligated to give you something good in return.  No, David, the man with a heart that beat after God’s own, tells us the goal of the hardship of that long journey to get to the house of the Lord was, to just say…thank you.

              The beauty and depth of this heartfelt thank you to God lies in better understanding the gift-giving process flow.  You see, we are not the ones that are worthy to give God gifts.  In fact, if you think you have anything within you or within your possession that would impress God, well, you are sorely mistaken.  In fact, it is just the opposite.  When we can arrive at the place where we truly understand that we are not capable of blessing God, but only Him us, then our view of God will shift from attempting to appease Him with gifts or acts, and we can simply kneel at His throne to offer the one thing He truly desires from those that call Him God and Savior…unbridled, genuine, heartfelt thanks for just how good He truly is.

              As always, perspective is key to better understanding.  If I gave you a shiny new Hot Wheels 2025 Corvette C8, how appreciative would you be?  What if I gave you a real 2025 Corvette C8?  I am certain that your level of appreciation and thanks to me would be much greater for your 1/1 scale Corvette than the 1/64 scale gift.  But what if I gave you a house?  I am certain that your thanks to me would, as a result of this grand generosity, run to the extreme.  Now let us make the gargantuan jump into the gift of physical life, guidance in that life, wisdom to process that life, and yes, the grandaddy of them all, eternal salvation of the soul.  Well, let’s be serious, how would you ever truly say thank you to someone for gifts of that magnitude and impossibility? 

              A big hurdle in answering that last sentence lies in whether you have received the gift of salvation from God.  For eternal salvation of the soul is just that, a gift from God.  You see, every human man, woman, and child ever born upon this planet have been sinners.  Yes, ever since Eve rebelliously pulled that fruit from the tree of life in Genesis 3, mankind has been incapable of reproducing the perfection God requires.  And ever since, mankind has needed redemption from his sins.  And since God so loves His creatures and the world He created, He made a way for His creatures to be redeemed from their sin and rejoined to Himself.  To do this, He sent His only Son to this planet to don human flesh, be born of a virgin to avoid the inherited sin nature, walk among us, and do it all in absolute perfection as only God could.  But in order to defeat physical and spiritual human death that all sin brings, God offered up His only Son on a Roman cross to be crucified and die as a sinless, perfect sacrifice to pay the price of all human sin for all time.  Yet in order to not just defeat sin, but eternally conquer it, Jesus was raised to life and walked out of His own burial tomb three days later.  So, what does all this mean for you?

              If you today, have not honestly admitted that you are a sinner and are in need of God to buy you (redeem you) out of the penalty and slavery to that sin, you have a decision on your hands.  Will you continue to walk this world with a created god of your own making and understanding, attempting to appease that god with the best you can offer, or will you instead stand before the one true God and simply ask Him to save you eternally from your sin?  You see, in the grand beauty of salvation in Jesus Christ, the gift was given over 2,000 years ago and is perpetually ready to be received by those that desire it with all of their heart.  All you must do is open your heart and receive the gift that was so generously given all those years ago.

               A great gift requires great thanks.  If you have not received the gift of salvation in Jesus Christ, today could be the day that changes your eternity.  And as you do accept the greatest gift that has ever been given, simply live in a daily pattern of giving heartfelt thanks and gratitude to a God that saved your soul from eternal damnation.  And if you have already asked Christ to save your soul, you are in the same boat.  A boat that should be filled to overflowing with daily gratitude and thanks to a God that not only saved your soul, but loves you enough to protect you, guide you, and correct you into the life of righteousness that He knows will bring you the abundant, joy-filled life He desires for you.  And well, for that, great thanks are indeed in order.

              Today, be intentional about saying thank you to God for the fact that you have an eternal home in heaven in His presence.  Yes, you can never truly get to the level of thanks that is due…but you can try, one heartfelt thank you at a time.

Blessings ~ Dan

“Give thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Ephesians 5:20

“But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Corinthians 15:57

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