I cannot tell you honestly how
thankful I am for Brother Kevin asking me to come. And I'm so
thankful that my wife Hannah has been able to come with me. all of the saints in Kingsport
say hello. I was thinking about this earlier,
Paul in And I'm just so humbled. We love you two so much. We just do. We're so thankful
that he is your pastor and she is your pastor's wife. And us
being young men and desiring greatly for the Lord all of us, our congregations,
our ministries. May our Lord be glorified and
may we be strengthened and encouraged by each other. I pray that will
be the case for many years to come. So thank you so much for
having us. If you'd like to turn with me,
we will be in Psalm 107. Psalm 107. And I pray that the Lord will
truly make this a blessing to us. I pray that He will allow
the simplicity of His own Word to be a true blessing to us.
Let's read verse 1 together. Psalm 107, verse 1. It says, O give thanks unto the Lord For
He is good, for His mercy endureth forever. What a beautiful verse
that is. So, so beautiful. Every word
in that verse is glorious. I don't ever want to put one
word of every word that proceeds out
of the mouth of God. One is not more glorious than
another one. But I want to point out to you one that really struck
me in this verse, okay? It's the word for, F-O-R. And I'll show you why. Look here
at verse 1, it says, O give thanks unto the Lord. What should we
do? We should give thanks unto the
Lord. We do give thanks unto the Lord. We get to give thanks unto the
Lord. See if this strikes you at all. We are counted among the ones
who are allowed to give thanks unto the Lord. Everybody doesn't
get to do that. They think they're doing that,
but they're not. Not in heart, and not unto the
Lord. They have this little idol named
Jesus they've made up in their mind. I'm talking about the Lord. The Lord God Almighty. We are
counted among the ones, by His grace, who get to give thanks
unto the Lord. We should give thanks unto the
Lord. We get to give thanks unto the Lord. We do give thanks unto
the Lord. The Lord. We give thanks unto
the Lord. Why? Verse 1 says, For He is good. That's the reason why. That's
why we give thanks to the Lord. It's because He is good. He's good. Now, this is our question
for the evening. And I sincerely pray that the
Lord will do for you what He has done for me with this verse
and with this thought, okay? Here's our question for the evening.
Why is the Lord good? The Lord is good. And we give
Him thanks because He's good. But the question is, This is
what I want us to just enter into for a minute and just get
a hold of for a minute. Why is the Lord good? The word for, F-O-R, is in here
twice. Both times when you look up the
word, it means because. That's what the word for means. Why is the Lord good? It's because
His mercy endureth forever. That's the reason why. Does that strike you like it
strikes me? Here is the glorious truth that
we're going to consider. Here's the outline for the message,
okay? Number one. Oh, give thanks. To who? Unto the Lord. Why? For He is good. Now, why is He good? That's what I've titled the message.
Why is He good? It's because for His mercy endureth forever. That just blesses my soul. The thought of that absolutely
blesses my soul. That's the reason why He is good. It's because His mercy endureth
forever. Verse 1 says, O give thanks. involves a few different things,
but mainly it involves giving thanks. We're here to give thanks. We're not here to do anything
to earn salvation. We're here to give thanks for
salvation. And I think about this all the
time. I was just thinking about it
while I was sitting in that chair. I pray the Lord will let me worship
Him tonight. You say, well, you're the preacher.
I know. But I pray the Lord will let me be one of the worshippers
tonight. I pray I won't go through the
motions. We're all in these tired, sinful
bodies. We're so prone to wander. Lord,
we feel it. We're just so weak. The Spirit's
willing, but the flesh is so weak. And I was begging the Lord,
please let me be a worshipper too. Let me enter into worship
too. Let my heart with absolute joy
give thanks to you, really, for what you've done for me. Really. Worship involves many things,
but mainly giving thanks. Giving thanks. We gather together. Why are we here? We know the
doctrines of grace. We know the this. We know the
that. You already know, unless you kick me out of here, you
already know what I'm going to preach. I'm going to preach Jesus
Christ and Him crucified. So why do we come? We present
ourselves together before the Lord to worship Him and to give
Him thanks and to praise Him and honor Him. This is what glory
is going to be. All of His people are going to
be gathered around His throne, sitting at His feet. And I don't
know how it's possible for a number that no man can number to all
of them be sitting at His feet. We're going to praise Him. We're
going to give Him thanks. We give thanks to Him because
that is all we have to give. That's all we have to give to
Him. That's all that we can give to Him. I'm sure you've heard,
everybody's heard the saying that religion loves to say, give
your heart to Jesus. I want you to give your heart
to Jesus. I can't give my heart to Him. I cannot give my heart
to Him. The Scripture says that in my
flesh, this is a dead heart. The Scripture says that this
is a cold and stony heart. The Scripture says that I'm dead.
A dead man can't do anything. A dead man cannot give anything. The Scripture says that our Lord
had to take our dead, cold, stony hearts out of us so that He could
put in His heart of life, flesh. I didn't give it. Our Lord had
to take it. He took it. The Scripture says, Give unto
Him the glory due unto His name. Isn't that what the Scripture
says? Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name. I can't do that. Not in my flesh. I have never given unto the Lord
the glory that is due unto His name. Never. Because it's the only thing that
has ever been solely produced by me, I would think, I would
say that I could give Him my sin. I didn't even do that. that he would willingly, when
you think about God, who God is, who God is, that he would
willingly take to himself all of the wicked sin of his people
and lay it on himself of his own will, of his own purpose,
of his own desire. He had to willingly take that
from me too. I didn't give it to him. He laid
it on Himself. So the fact of the matter is,
He's the one who does all the giving. He does all the giving. He gave His life. He gave His
body. He gave His blood. Thank God
He gave His righteousness. You know, Paul in Romans 10,
he said, I want so desperately for my kinsmen to be saved. He
said they have a zeal of God. They do. They do. They have a
zeal of God, but it's not according to knowledge. They're going about
trying to establish their own righteousness, and they have
not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God, who is
Jesus Christ. Christ is the end of the law
for righteousness. He gave every good deed that
I will ever need to stand before God with. Every good deed that
I will ever need for God to look at me and say, well done, He
gave every bit of it to me. He gave His holiness. He gave
His purity. He gave His inheritance. You
know, we don't even do that down here on this earth. We get a
couple of pennies come the end and, you know, that's all mine. All the spiritual blessings of
heaven. All of His inheritance. Our Lord gave His place. He left His place. He left His
place so He could put us there. In His place. He gave Himself. And when He gave Himself, He
gave His all. He gave it all. So He did all
the giving. Even the thanks. that is in our
mouth. Even the thanks that is in our
heart, even that thanks, He put it there. Isn't that wonderful? He had to put it there so that
I could give it back to Him. He put it there so we could give
it back to Him. It is God which works in us of His good pleasure. Our Lord
said, Father, I give Thee thanks. Father, I thank Thee. Oh, Heavenly
Father. My spirit in my people. I love
the book of Galatians. It talks about the spirit of
our Lord being in us, in His people, crying out for us. I love it. Because He did that for us and
does that for us, that's what we do. Because He is in His people,
because He's in us, creating that in us, that's what we do.
Thank you. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord,
for saving our souls. Thank you, Lord. We give Him
thanks for everything that He's given to us, and we give Him
thanks for everything that He has given for us. He gave His
all to put away our sin. And we give thanks for that. You know, the Lord opens our
eyes. He reveals these things. We get
a hold of some of these things. And we rejoice in the fact that
our sin has been put away. But I'm telling you, on the Day
of Judgment, as we watch God's judgment coming down on sin,
Can you imagine how thankful? What an understatement. But how
thankful we're going to be for the blood that put away our sin. Oh, all through the judgment
we'll be crying, thank you. Thank you. Everything He endured,
outside of Him, a man or a woman must endure. He endured it for
us. So verse 1 says, O give thanks
unto the Lord. The one who has done this for
us and the one who all of our thanks goes to and belongs to
is the Lord. Who is the Lord? Who is the Lord? This is a good
question. I have met quite a few people
who don't know the answer to this question. We take it for
granted. If the Lord has revealed the
answer to us, we take it so for granted. Who is the Lord? The name Lord means, when you
look it up in the Bible dictionary, it means the Sovereign. That's what the name Lord means.
Sovereign. It means the God. The God who actually is God. It means, Lord means the One
who controls all things and reigns over all things. Don't you love
that? Every time, I read Romans 8,
28 often, and it just goes right by me. But every time the Lord
lets me get a hold of it, it's a brand new revelation to me. work together for good to them
that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.
The One who is controlling all things, and doing all things,
and reigning over all things. The One who has all power, all
might, all strength, all ability. The One who is able to do whatever
He wants to do with whoever He wants to do it. He is the one that we're giving
thanks to. He's the one that we're giving
thanks to. And who is that exactly? When
we say that we're giving thanks to Him, who are we referring
to exactly? His name is Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ. That's who this Lord is. The
Sovereign, Almighty, Everlasting, Lord Jesus Christ. Turn with me, if you would, over
to 1 Timothy 1. 1 Timothy 1. Verse 17. It says, Now unto the King Eternal." Who
is the King? Jesus Christ. Now unto the King
Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, the only wise God, be honor and
glory forever and ever. Amen. I'm looking forward to
saying that with the grave congregation. That's who we're talking about,
though, our King, the Lord Jesus Christ, our King. Look with me
at Jude. There's only one chapter in the
book of Jude, but I can't help but say Jude 1. Jude 1, verse
25. Jude 1.25, it says, To the only
wise God, our Savior. Who is our Savior? Jesus Christ. The King of kings and Lord of
lords is our Savior. To the only wise God, our Savior,
be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. So that's who we're giving thanks
to. That's who we are very happily giving thanks to. Jesus Christ,
our Savior, our King, our Lord. Alright, go back with me to Psalm
107. Verse 1 says, for He is good. Sometimes being a preacher of
the gospel, the true gospel, I feel like back in the old days,
the paper boys who used to stand on the street corners, holler
and read all about it. Great news. Wonderful news. There's wonderful news right
here. This all-powerful, all-controlling
God over heaven and earth is good. He's good. I've mentioned this a few
times. I just mentioned this up in Rescue.
I'll mention it again. We have an adversary. pawn, a created being doing whatever
he allows him to do. But we have an adversary who
is more powerful than us, and he's bad. And everything that
he does according to his own free will that he thinks he has, all things work together for
evil. Does it ever strike us how thankful
we ought to be that the One who actually is all-powerful, the
One who is the highest, who can never be dethroned, is good? Isn't that wonderful? Wonderful news! The Almighty,
that everything must bow to. Look at verse 2. It says, Let
the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom He hath redeemed from
the hand of the enemy. Do we want to know the goodness
of the Lord? Enter into this. He redeemed us from the hand
of the enemy. He redeemed us. That means He
paid the price in full. Redeemed. You're welcome to take
it with you. paid in full. He redeemed us
from all of our sin. And what did that redemption
cost Him? His own blood. It cost Him His own blood. His life, His death, His blood.
Verse 2 says, Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom He hath
redeemed from the hand of the enemy, and gathered them out
of the lands from the east and from the west. over in Tennessee
and California, from the north and the south.
They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way. They found
no city to dwell in. All of them said, we're pilgrims
and strangers. This is not our home. We're passing
through. May God give us strength to just
keep going. Verse 5, hungry and thirsty for
Christ, for the gospel. Their soul fainted in them. Then
they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them
out of their distresses. And He led them forth by the
right way. Who is that? Jesus Christ. That they might go to a city
of habitation. Oh, that men would praise the
Lord for His goodness and for His wonderful works to the children
of men. He satisfieth the longing soul
and filleth the hungry soul with goodness. such as sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death, being bound in affliction and iron.
And that's where all of us were before the Lord shined the light
of Christ, broke the bars, which he goes on to say, verse 11,
they rebelled against the words of God and condemned the counsel
of the Most High. Therefore He brought down their
heart with labor. They fell down and there was
none to help. Isn't that what happened to us
when the Lord broke us? and men only. Verse 13, Then
they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He saved them out
of their distresses. He brought them out of darkness
and the shadow of death and broke their bands and sundered. Oh,
that men would praise the Lord for His goodness and for His
wonderful works to the children of men. And that's what the psalm
goes on to say. Verse 21, he says, Oh, that men
would praise the Lord for His goodness and for His wonderful works. He sent them His Word and healed
them and delivered them from their destruction. Just by the
power of the Word of God. That centurion said, Lord, just
speak the Word. You want me to come to your house?
I'll come to your house and heal your servant. I'm not worthy. Just speak the Word. Oh, that man would praise the
Lord wonderful works through the children of Israel. Oh, give
thanks to the Lord, for He is good. He is good to every one
of His sinful people that were given to Him to redeem. Now, why is He good? Why is this almighty, sovereign
God so good Here's one. Oh, give thanks unto the Lord,
because He is good, because His mercy endureth forever. That's why He is so good. That's why He will never stop
being good to His people. endures forever. He said, I'm
the Lord, I change not, and that's why you sons of Jacob are not
conserved. It's because His mercy endures forever. It is brand
new every single morning. Brand new every single morning.
Great is His faithfulness. I don't feel like I'm faithful
in anything. You know what does my heart good? Great is His faithfulness. Great is His faithfulness. Every
single morning, the blood, the mercy that comes from the blood
He shed, it covers everything over brand new, every morning. I had an illustration right here
and I erased it today because I ended up telling it to rescue
and I thought I'm not going to tell the same illustration everywhere
but I'm going to tell it to you too. I was about to tell you this
but this illustration is just more appropriate. Really it's
a story. There's a dear brother in Kingsport who who the Lord has allowed us to
have a little TV program. And he saw our program and he
started watching it. And one Sunday night, I pulled
up to the church, and he was already sitting there. And he
got out of his car and was looking in my window to see if that was
me. And so I got out, and he just
had the biggest smile on his face, and he stuck his hand out.
And he said, you don't know me, but he said, seeing you is like
seeing an old friend. He said, I got some questions.
And he said, I think you can answer them. He's been with us
now for four years. And for the past four years,
this has been his biggest thing. He is a sinner, and he knows
it. That's his biggest problem. He's about 70 years old. Dear,
dear brother. But he's always wanting to make
sure. Now, you're telling me, and I'll
show him in the Word. Because every time he sees it,
he says, OK, there it is. Which is all I can do. Yep, that's
what it says. OK. Don't always understand it,
but I believe it. But he just deeply, I spent so
much time talking with him and loved every minute of it. Because
he has had a life of sin. And so he got religion. And he's hoping religion, he
was hoping religion was going to take care of all that sin.
But here was his problem. He's still a sinner. And he can't
stop sinning. And one Sunday morning, he came
in, and he was just torn all to pieces. He was worried about
his past sins, worried about the sins he's committing right
now, and he did not trust himself one bit to stop sinning for the
future. And so I told him, I said, Danny,
cry out to the Lord for mercy. The Lord shed His blood to cover
our sin from the cradle to the grave. He covered the sin. That brand new every morning
is He paid for the sins I have yet to even think about committing.
Cry out for mercy, mercy in the blood. And so He said, okay,
mercy, mercy. That's what I want to do. I'm
going to cry out for mercy in the blood. That was right before So I gave the Bible study. Thirty
minutes later, he grabbed me right after that between our
Bible study and morning message, and he pulled me in my office
and looked me right in the eye, and he, with the most pitiful
look on his face, he said, how much mercy does the Lord have
for me? And I said, Danny, it's infinite. It will never run out. It's so
much, where your sin has abounded, His gift, the grace of the mercy
in the blood of Jesus Christ so far covers all your sin. It starts over. He's like, I
even dream sin. Sin is in my dreams. I said,
it starts over brand new. As soon as you wake up, brand
spanking new mercy. And he grabbed my hand. And right there in my office,
there were people in the building, he just started laughing so loud,
he was just belly laughing, and he said, that's the greatest
news I've ever heard in my life. And it is. It is mercy in the
blood of the Lamb that God sacrificed to put away the sin of His people. Greatest news that could ever
be told. Every morning it starts over
brand spanking new. Every morning. The song says,
dark the stain that soiled man's nature. Long the distance that
he fell. Far removed from hope and heaven
into deep despair and hell. And the blood of God's own Son
purifies the soul and reaches deeper than the stain has gone.
Praise the Lord for full salvation. Not a down payment on salvation. Full salvation. God still reigns
upon His throne. And I know the blood still reaches. mercy to us. That's His covenant. That's His promise. Why is the
Lord good? Because He promised He would
be. He won't go back on His word. He made a covenant in the blood. He made a covenant to cover our
sin in His own blood. And because it was the blood
of the Almighty God Himself that paid our debt, He paid it so
powerfully and so completely, There is no possible way that
that debt can ever come back. Ever. Never. Sin will never be
brought up ever again. The sins that you just want to
get away from, the sins that you can't get out of your mind,
the sins that they will never be brought up again as pure,
sanctified. God Almighty is going to look
at His people because of the blood of even insinuate sin on my people. Who is He that condemneth? Christ
the God. No possible way. The blood, the
blood, the blood. Now, this is the story I wanted
to read to you. So I'm going to read it to you
now, okay? I hope you enjoy this. This is
taken from a message by Charles Spurgeon. All right. This is
just a little snippet taken out of one of his messages. I'm going
to tell you some things that I don't know what he's talking
about. And this is what he said. He said during this last week,
I have been with Brother Offord. I don't know who Brother Offord
is, but one day soon, I believe we will. During this last week
I've been with Brother Offord conducting prayer meetings. Spurgeon
would travel around through the week and preach places. And he
told one evening a tale which I made him tell every evening
afterwards for I thought it so good. He said there was a poor
man living on Dartmoor who had been employed during the summer
in looking after horses and cows and so on that were turned out
on the moor. I'm assuming that's a field. He was a perfect heathen and
never went to a place of worship, perhaps since he was a child.
For him, there was no Sabbath. After a time, he grew very ill.
He was over 60 years of age. and having nothing to live upon,
he went into the workhouse. I don't know what kind of assisted
living place that is. While he was there, it pleased
the mysterious spirit to make him uneasy as to his soul. He felt that he must die, and
the old man had just enough light to let him see that if he did
die, all was wrong with regard to a future state. He had a little
grandchild who lived in a neighboring town, Plymouth, I think it was,
and he asked leave for his grandchild to come in every day to see him. As he was very ill and near death,
that was allowed. She came in and he said to her,
Read the Bible to me, dear." She complied. And the more she
read, the more wretched the old man grew. Read it again, said he. The more
she read, the more dark his mind seemed to be with a sense of
guilt. It just kept getting worse and
worse. At last, one day, she came to
that passage in the first epistle of John. You know it. The blood
of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanseth us from all sin. Is that there? He asked. Yes,
grandfather, replied the little girl. That is there. Is that
there? Oh yes, Grandfather, it is there.
Then read it again. Read it again. She again read,
The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin. My dear, are you sure it is just
like that? Yes, grandfather. Then read it
again, dear. The blood of Jesus Christ, his
son, cleanseth us from all sin. Then, he said, take my finger
and put it on that verse. Is it on that text, child? Is
my finger on that blessed text? Yes, grandfather. Then, said
he, tell them, alluding to his friends, that I die in the faith
of that. And he closed his eyes and doubtless
entered into an eternal rest. Spurgeon said, and I will die
in the faith of that truth by the grace of God, and so will
you, I trust. Brethren and sisters, die with
your finger on that text. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses
us from all sin. Oh, give thanks unto the Lord
for your good, for his mercy enduring forever. Amen. Thank you, Brother Kevin. Thank you. It's been our privilege.