It Is Good to Give Thanks to the Lord

In one paragraph

Pastor Ray walked through Psalm 92 as his sermon text for the week, weaving in a personal story from a road trip he and Carl took to visit church members who had moved away. The psalm gave him a framework for something he had already been telling people in pastoral conversations that week: find a way to worship God in the middle of everything else going on. The psalm opens with a simple...

Read together

1. Psalm 92 the main text of the sermon, sung and expounded throughout
2. Ephesians 2:4-6 read aloud to accompany the song about God's mercy, describing how God gave us life when He raised Christ from the dead
3. Exodus 15:11 read aloud to lead into a song about God's holiness, asking who is like the Lord among the gods
4. Revelation 12:11 referenced before the offering song, believers overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony
5. Mark 8:36-37 quoted during the second section of Psalm 92, asking what it benefits a person to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul
6. Mark 8:34-35 quoted alongside the forfeit-the-soul passage, about denying yourself, taking up your cross, and following Jesus
7. Psalm 19 referenced to show that day after day creation pours forth speech in every language, so God is not slack in giving information
8. Psalm 145:8-9 read as the benediction, declaring the Lord is gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and good to all

Talk about it

1. Brad shared that he spent years trying to fill a void with performance and achievement, and that friends loved him enough to have hard conversations about his sin and the grace available in Jesus. Has someone ever cared enough about you to have that kind of honest conversation, and what did it take for you to actually hear it?
2. Ray described windshield time on the road to Bellingham as a place where he could worship without distraction, and he gave the same counsel to several people that week: find somewhere to worship God in the middle of everything else going on. Where is that place or moment for you, and what gets in the way of getting there?
3. Ray pointed to Psalm 92 and the contrast between heedless arrogance and tireless praise, saying it is incredibly arrogant for a finite person to say they know better than the One who created everything. Where do you notice that kind of arrogance in yourself, and what does humility before God actually look like in your daily life?
4. Ray said that the wicked sprouting up like grass and evildoers seeming to flourish is something that happens in every age, but that it was only so they might be destroyed forevermore. How do you hold on to that truth when injustice around you looks like it is winning?
5. The psalm ends with the promise that the righteous will still yield fruit in advanced age, full of sap and very green. What does it look like to you to be someone who is still growing and still declaring the goodness of God later in life, and who in your own life has modeled that for you?