Blessed is the Lord – 12/1/24

Beatitudes in the Psalms. Beatitudes is not a word we use a lot. But beatitudes, believe it or not, right now, are everywhere.

“Blessings” is another word for beatitudes. Blessings, especially at Christmas, are all over. Think of this. How many of you are familiar with the character Tiny Tim from Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol?” What’s his famous line? And I’m going to warn you, there’s a lot of crowd participation today. Alright? I’m going to ask you to say a lot of things out loud and I’m going to ask you to do it loudly, and don’t do the church mumble. So let’s start with this one. Let’s set the bar high.

What is Tiny Tim’s famous line? Yes. And bonus points to all of you who threw in the English accent in there. Well done. “God bless us everyone.” It’s a blessing. It’s a beatitude.

What about Hallmark greeting cards? Do you know Hallmark makes $5 billion of revenue a year? Christmas is the largest season for them. They capitalize on that by creating blessings, or beatitudes, for us to send to other people.

I’m going to give you some of my favorites. Here are my top five Hallmark beatitudes. Notice they’re all about people being happy or blessed. Blessed. Happy. Same thing. Here we go.

“May your Christmas sparkle [that’s a great word], may your Christmas sparkle, and be merry and bright. I hope it comes with peace and happiness that lasts throughout the year. With love and warmth of heart, wishing you a merry Christmas.” A blessing.

“I don’t want much for Christmas. I just want the person reading this to be loved, healthy, and happy. Merry Christmas.” Another blessing.

“Wishing you all the happiness you can hold! I hope the love of your family keeps you warm on those cold winter nights. Merry Christmas to you and your family!” A blessing of happiness.

“To the most wonderful family in the world. I wish you a great Christmas filled with joy, love, and happiness. Merry Christmas.” Another blessing.

And my favorite.

“The gift of happiness. The gift of love. The gift of health. May all these be yours at Christmas and throughout the years to come.”

Just warms you up hearing that one. A blessing of happiness. Hallmark creates and monetizes beatitudes.

How about this? I’m going to let you in on something that you don’t know. You have heard or sung about the Beatitudes every Christmas. This is a little Christmas conspiracy theory that you might not be aware of. Let’s see — again, crowd participation, be ready here — see if you can finish this lyric for me.

“On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…”

“A partridge in a pear tree.”

Yes, the famous song. “The 12 Days of Christmas” conspiracy. Here’s how the story goes. Just wait. This is a good one. I know there are some conspiracy people at North Hills. You’re going to buy into this one.

Apparently, there was a time when teaching theology was illegal and the church buried within “The 12 Days of Christmas” hints at its major beliefs and characters. And I’d like to tell you, I authoritatively cite chef and TV food personality, the Pioneer Woman, as proof that this is true. This is her decoding it on her website.

1 The partridge in a pear tree = Jesus
2 Turtle Doves =  the Old and New Testaments
3 French hens = faith, hope, charity
4 Calling birds = the four Gospels
5  Golden rings = the first five books of the Bible
6 Geese a-laying = the six days of creation
7 Swans a-swimming = the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit
8 Maids a-milking. There they are, the eight Beatitudes
9 Lady’s dancing is the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit.
10 Lords a-leaping = the Ten Commandments
11 Pipers piping = the 11 faithful apostles. (Judas didn’t make “12 days of Christmas.”}
And 12 drummers drumming are the twelve points of doctrine in the Apostle’s Creed

Blessings and beatitudes are everywhere at Christmas and you didn’t even know it. I mean, you cannot argue with Tiny Tim, Hallmark, or the Pioneer Woman.

They’re everywhere. Happiness, wishes of happiness, wishes of blessing are almost required at Christmas. It’s a pressure that pushes into our life. This is a time of year when people are merry and happy. The holidays become a symbol of it.

We have these hopes for happiness. Time off of school, or time off of work will make me happy. Presents, that will definitely make me happy. Family gatherings, maybe. Depends on the moment. Social events of some type. Getting with friends. Lights, tinsel, and trees. Decorating the house. I love that stuff.

Then there’s the nostalgia and romanticism of Christmas. You put all of that together, and it’s like there’s this pressure of happiness. Right now, everybody be happy, be blessed, be fortunate. But then we wake up and we look around, and we really wonder, is everyone happy?

North Hills, are we happy? Are we a happy people? How do we get this blessed life? How do we get a happy life?

Earlier in the year, we worked through the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, where Jesus gives us these blessing statements. And those were unbelievably powerful for us as a church. But I made a discovery this year about beatitudes. In 2024 I decided I was only going to read the Psalms. I was going to work through Psalms like a book, beginning to end. I’d study Matthew for preaching, but other than that, I’ve been in the Psalms, and beatitudes are all over the place in the Psalms. Jesus may have even gotten some of his content in his Beatitudes from the Psalms. Consider this.

Psalm 37:11. The poet says,

“The meek shall inherit the land…”

Well, Jesus says in his Beatitudes,

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

So Jesus is echoing the Beatitudes in the Psalms when he preaches on the mountain.

So I thought in this holiday season, where every messaging source there is coming at us and telling us what the blessed life is supposed to be, how we’re supposed to be happy, and what it looks like, that it would be wise for us to step back in time and listen to the poets in the Psalms tell us what the happy life actually is.

And so to be purposely cheesy, how do we have ourselves a blessed little Christmas? I want us to start with a fill in the blank. It’s in your notes. I want you to respond to this as quickly in your brain as you can. It’s ____ is the Lord.

I want you to fill in that first part with a word real fast. First thing that comes to your mind. What is the Lord? What is God? Write it down really fast. I see lots of pens moving. This is awesome. So now I want to question, did anybody write down “happy”? No votes for happy is the Lord. And that’s okay. There’s lots of different answers to this question. Holy is the Lord. Loving is the Lord. Merciful is the Lord. Gracious is the Lord.

But in the Psalms, “Happy is the Lord” is the popular answer for what God is like. When it comes to the Beatitudes, blessed is the Lord. Happy is the Lord. So if we’re going to understand what the blessed, happy life is, we’ve got to look at God first, because happy or blessed is the Lord.

So I want us to look at a few Psalms together and we’re going to read these together in a way where it’s bold, that’s you. So come in with me. And some of it’s really fast. You’ve got to jump in and out on just words. But I want you to read these blessings, these beatitudes, about God. And let’s learn, “Happy is the Lord.”

So here we go. Psalm 41:13. We start right out together. You’re on bold. You guys ready? Less than confident. One more time. You guys ready? Okay. Here we go.

“Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting! Amen and Amen.”

Psalm 72:19. Right in.

“Blessed be his glorious name forever; may the whole earth be filled with his glory! Amen and Amen.”

Psalm 89:52, “Blessed be the Lord forever! Amen and Amen.” Yes.

Psalm 106:48, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting! And let all the people say, ‘Amen!’ Praise the Lord!”

Psalm 113:2, “Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forevermore!”

God is blessed. God is happy. God is fortunate. But God’s blessed existence, his state of blessing, is super unique. It doesn’t begin or end. God’s state of being blessed is an everlasting to everlasting, blessed existence. It is forever and ever, forevermore. Past, present, future, blessed, happy existence.

We could describe it this way. God is infinitely and inherently blessed! He is infinitely forever blessed and he is inherently blessed. It comes from him.

Kevin DeYoung, who is a pastor and author, who seems like he writes a book every four days, describes God this way.

“God is infinite in relation to himself. We can call this God’s absolute perfection. All that God has [all that God possesses, anything God is] he is [that], and all that God is he is ad infinitum.”

So Mr. DeYoung helps us process these beatitudes in the Psalms. He helps us see this truth about God being blessed. It’s infinite and inherent. God is inherently blessed.

]And what we mean by that is, God’s state of blessing comes from being God, being who he is. The psalmists only declare God’s state as blessed. Blessed be the Lord. Happy be the Lord. Happy is the Lord. It’s not anything they do to make him blessed. They’re just recognizing it. No one gave God blessing. No one, no force acted upon God to make him blessed. He is inherently blessed. He needs nothing else to be blessed. God’s blessing exists within God and God alone because he is blessing.

God is then the happiest and most fortunate and most blessed being in existence. And his happiness flows directly from himself. He is inherently happy, blessed, and fortunate.

Mr. DeYoung also helps us understand that God is infinitely blessed. That God exists past, present, and future, in a forever and ever limitless state of blessing. There’s no cap to the amount of blessing God possesses. Mr. DeYoung put it this way.

“All that God is he is ad infinitum.”

So “ad infinitum” is kind of a fancy Latin way of paraphrasing the great theologian Buzz Lightyear. You guys know Buzz Lightyear’s tagline? If you know it, could you say that out loud? It is what?

“To infinity and beyond.” You movie watchers. It’s all you do, watch movies. “To infinity and beyond.”

God is infinitely blessed. God is happy to infinity and beyond. He is forever and ever blessed within himself. When we start understanding God being what he is, and that he is those things to infinity and beyond, it’s one of those parts of us, trying to understand and love our God, that our minds shut down.

Anything the Bible says God is, he is forever, without limit, perpetually. If God is love, he’s forever and ever, forevermore,  everlasting to everlasting love. If he is merciful, he is merciful to infinity and beyond. If he is gracious, to infinity and beyond. God is perpetually in this state.

Paul, a writer of the Bible much later in time than the Psalms, picks up on this same idea. And once again, I’m going to ask you to read with me energetically where it’s bold.

Romans 1:25, “because they [humanity] exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.”

Romans 9:5 “To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God overall, blessed forever. Amen.”

2 Corinthians 11:31, “The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, he who is blessed forever.”

He who is happy forever. So God, the Creator and Father, Jesus, the Lord and Messiah, are forever blessed. Are forever happy. Forever fortunate. Forever full.

I don’t think, until I read the Psalms, I’ve ever consciously sat and thought, “Happy is the Lord.” But God, theologically, God is infinitely blessed, and happy, and fortunate. And I wonder if there’s not great value in us as people, considering what the Psalmist say and anchoring our belief in God, happy is the Lord.

So let’s say that’s true. Let’s say God is blessed forever and ever and ever. And I want to live a blessed life, a fortunate, happy life. How do I get it? How do I get to be part of whatever God is? Because if he’s infinite blessing, he’s the only one who can give blessing. How do I get to be part of that state?

First, I’ve got to recognize how I’m different from God.

I am not inherently or infinitely blessed. This is going to shock many of you, but I am not always a blessing to people. That was quick laughter right there. I’m not always a blessing to people. I’m not always in a blessed state. I’m not always receiving blessing from people around me. My existence is very different than God’s existence. Yes, I would love to be that. I’d love to be a blessing all the time. But history and humanity itself proves we’re not naturally blessed or blessing people.

Consider Paul’s description of humanity from his letter to the Roman church. He says this in Romans 3,

“As it is written: ‘None is righteous, [None is legally fortunate. None has measured up.] no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they become worthless; no one does good, not even one.’”

And that doesn’t mean that you can’t do a good thing. It just means you can’t do a good enough thing to measure up to the standard of God’s righteousness. You can’t do anything to get into the blessed state on your own. Paul continues to describe us using poetry and imagery. Humanity.

“Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace [the way of full wholeness, the way of blessing] they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Friends, I challenge you, open your Bible to Romans 3. Get to that part and then watch the news for a half hour. And as you watch, check off each description as you see it. Humanity’s feet are swift to shed blood. Humanity’s mouth, they’re full of curses and bitterness. There’s no peace. I don’t have to argue what Paul argues. I just have to make you look around and see. That’s not a blessed, happy state of life at all.

So the story of the Bible, Paul’s words in Romans in particular, reveal that we’re not naturally in a blessed state. So unlike God, I’m not inherently happy. I’m not inherently blessed.

So number 2, how do I get access to this blessed state? I recognize I need an intervention.

I have to recognize I’m different from God. And then I’ve got to recognize I need an intervention. I need something to happen in my unblessed life to provide access to God’s blessed life. So we’ve heard from the Psalms and the poets. We heard from the Apostle Paul. Let’s listen to Jesus’s friend Peter, who describes how to gain access to God’s blessing.

He begins in I Peter 1 with the same refrain that we’ve been talking about.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!”

Happy be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Why, Peter? Why should God be happy? Peter goes on to explain because a blessed God intervenes in people’s lives. Peter says this.

“According to [God’s] great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance, [see how blessed this sounds] to an inheritance that is imperishable, [it’s] undefiled, and [it’s] unfading, [and it’s] kept in heaven for you, who, by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”

Remember, if God is something, he is that to infinity and beyond. So God is merciful to infinity and beyond. Through God’s infinite mercy, he causes people to be born again. To be born away from a cursed state into a blessed state. It is a living hope. Dead hope makes no sense. Living hope changes lives.

At Christmas we focus, and rightly, it is good to consider the birth of Jesus, the incarnation of Jesus, God becoming a man — 100% God, 100% man at the same time. But the story doesn’t stop there. Jesus was born that way as a perfect man because I’m not one. And you’re not either.

Jesus lived a perfect life because I couldn’t live a perfect life. And you couldn’t either. None of us are inherently blessed. Jesus died in my place so that I don’t have to because I don’t have the power to pay for my own sin. He did it for me. So Jesus died and then rose again so that I can have access to a forever inheritance. A forever blessing from God. A life that never stops being blessed, never turns dirty again, and won’t ever grow stale.

That’s blessing. That is a state of happiness and being fortunate. Jesus died to remove our cursed state and replace it with a blessed state. So through faith in Jesus is how we have access to God’s infinite blessing. So the beauty of the story is, is it doesn’t stop there.

God not only gives us access to his infinite blessing, he then activates that blessing in our lives. God actively blesses people out of his infinite blessing. So I’m going to read multiple Psalms right in a row, and I want you to see this pattern that the poets do. They say “Happy is the Lord” because this is what he does. This is how God actively interacts with his people in this state of being blessed. What does God actually do to bless his people? Here we go.

Psalm 28:6, “Blessed be the Lord! For he has heard the voice of my pleas for mercy.”

God listens to his people.

Psalm 31:21, “Blessed be the Lord, for he has wondrously shown his steadfast love to me when I was in a besieged city.”

God shows love to his people in difficult times.

Psalm 66:20, “Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me!”

God doesn’t give up or ignore his people.

Psalm 68:19, “Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears us up; God is our salvation.”

God is daily present in your life.

Psalm 68:35, “Awesome is God from his sanctuary; the God of Israel — he is the one who gives power and strength to his people. Blessed be God!”

God aids his people with what they need, to accomplish tasks for that given day.

Psalm 72:18, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things.”

God uniquely displays power. You can see some amazing things happen in our culture, but God uniquely displays power.

]Psalm 119:12, “Blessed are you, O Lord; teach me your statutes!”

]Teach me your words. God tells his people his expectations.

]Psalm 124:6, “Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as prey to their teeth!”

God doesn’t abandon his people to their enemies.

Psalm 144:1-2, “Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle; he is my steadfast love and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield and he in whom I take refuge.”

God is so integral to the blessed life, to the happy life, that the poet has to choose about six metaphors to make it make sense. He’s a stronghold, a tower. I take refuge. I’m with him every day. God is the ultimate safe space for his people. The God who is blessing blesses his people. He gives them access to his blessing and then rolls that blessing right on top of their lives.

So God is infinitely, inherently blessed. God provides access to blessing through Jesus, and God actively blesses his people in life.

So for the moment, I’d love for you to believe that all of that is true. If it is, what should our response be? If God is the happiest being in existence, what difference does that make? If God provides me access through Jesus, what difference does that make? If God, after I have access to him, continues to bless me, what difference does that make? What should I do?

My hope is, as you hear these Beatitudes and these poems in the Psalms, that something in you is going, if that’s who he is, Ferguson, tell me what to do. What do I do with that? It’s too much for me. I would say the Psalms tell us to bless the God who blesses us. We return the favor.

Now, my hope is that there are some people in this room right now who are saying, hey, wait a minute, Ferguson. A little earlier you said God is inherently blessed and we can’t add anything to him. But now you’re saying our response should be to bless God. What’s the deal with that? What are you saying?

I’m going to stick with what I said earlier. There’s nothing we can do to add to God’s state of blessing, but we can still bless God in return. I think the Psalms, and we’re going to look at several, I think the Psalms are telling us this:

God blesses people by addition.

He adds something to us. He provides something for us – access to his blessing through Jesus – and then actively in our life giving us blessings. He adds to us.

People bless God by recognition. By recognition.

We see what God does. We remember what God does and we tell it to each other, and we sing about it. We yell about it, and we interact about it all the time. We bless God by saying who he is and what he has done.

The Psalms in particular (we’re going to talk about this a little bit more in a few minutes), the Psalms, I want to keep reminding you, the Psalms are songs. They’re to be sung. Yes, we read them, but they were originally all songs that God’s people sang to each other.

Listen to how they talk to, the poet is talking to other people, telling them what to do. What do we do?

Psalm 66:8, “Bless our God, O peoples; [bless him, praise him, recognize him] let the sound of his praise be heard, who has kept our soul among the living and has not let our feet slip.”

Psalm 68:26, “Bless God [where?] in the great congregation, [praise] the Lord, [in the middle of a lot of people] O you who are of Israel’s fountain!”

Psalm 103:1-5, “Bless the Lord, O my soul,”

Now the poet is talking to himself. He’s modeling what it’s like to tell yourself to praise the Lord.

“Bless the Lord, O my soul,  [and don’t do it half-heartedly] and all that is within me, [everything that makes Ryan, Ryan, all of that] bless his holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul,

Now look at this list that he gives to us.

“Forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”

Praise the Lord for what he has done.

Psalm 103:20-22. Now this poet recruits other help to praise. Why? Because we can’t give enough praise and blessing to the Lord in this room. We need some heavenly assistance.

Psalm 103:20-22, “Bless the Lord, O you his angels, [praise the Lord angelic beings], you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of His word!

“Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers, who do his will!”

Every being that God has ever created to serve him in the angelic realm, the poet is saying, hey, join with us in this praise. He pushes it even further.

“Bless the Lord, all his works, in all places of his dominion.”

Everything, now we’re recruiting everything that God’s made. Hey, blue whales, join the choir. Praise the Lord. He’s so full of blessing that we need everything that’s ever existed, that he’s ever made in every realm of his dominion, to join the praise.

Psalm 104:1-4, “Bless the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, you are very great! [Understatement] You are clothed,”

Now he gets to the poetry to help us understand how great is God.

“You are clothed with splendor and majesty, covering yourself with light as with a garment,”

I’m wearing flannel. God wears the sun.

“stretching out the heavens like a tent.”

Have you ever seen a backpacker put up a tent? The poles and the fabric and trying to make it all happen. God looks at the universe and goes, eh, that’s my tent. Just throw that out there.

“He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters;”

The beams of God’s roof are on the universe.

“he makes the clouds his chariot; he rides on the wings of the wind; he makes his messengers winds, his ministers a flaming fire.”

And perhaps most simply, Psalm 104:35,

“Bless the Lord, O my soul! Praise the Lord!”

Blessed people bless the God that blessed them. It just comes out. Now it’s not the same energy in every season. But underneath it all, if we have been given access to this realm, and God’s active, ongoing blessing, we bless that in return.

Happy people, blessed people, praise the God that gave them their happiness. Fortunate people recognize God for their state of fortune. If I’m right with the God of the universe, how much better can it get? That’s the pinnacle.

So happy people praise God. We attempt in all types and in all forms to recognize the forever blessed state of God.

So today I want to set kind of three simple goals of what to do with the idea of God being blessed. And then we’re going to try to practice it together for the rest of the service. So simple goals flowing out of the Beatitudes about God.

Number one, refresh our thinking about God.

Refresh our thinking, reset the browser. That’s kind of old school. I don’t know that we have to do that quite as much as we used to, but you’ve got to refresh it. You’ve got to redesign it, rethink, refresh your thinking about God. God is the most blessed being forever. John Mark Comer, in his discipleship book, quotes A.W. Tozer, an early 20th century pastor and author. Comer expounds on one of his most famous statements. So Comer writes this:

“Tozer famously said, ‘What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us,’ [Comer comments] because we become like our mental picture of God. For this reason, spiritual formation in the Way of Jesus [becoming like Jesus] begins with the healing of our false images of God … because we become like who we believe God is.”

So right now in my life, the way I live, as you watch me, you will get a picture of the God that I believe in. And that’s true for you, too. If you’ve got access to God’s blessed state through Jesus, as you live life, you are becoming like the God you believe in. The question we have to keep asking ourselves is, is that picture accurate? I don’t want to become like a God that isn’t Yahweh. That isn’t like he revealed himself in his Word. If I believe that God is a judgmental, mean, old granddad, I’m going to become like that God. If I believe that God is distant and doesn’t really care about the needs of people or the needs of the world today, I will become distant to people, their needs, and the needs of the world today. I will become like a God I believe in.

I think the Beatitudes in the Psalms about God give us a moment to refresh our thinking. Okay, God is everything that he is. He is that to a complete degree. So God is blessed. God is happy. God is love. God is gracious. God loves justice. All of these things. We want the fullest picture of who God is so that we can become like the fullest, most accurate picture of who God is. The Psalms, these Beatitudes, give us a moment to refresh our thinking about who God is.

Second, receive access to God’s blessing through faith in Jesus.

The blessed or happy life begins with faith in Jesus. And this whole time — we’re going to be talking about this for the next four weeks, more beatitudes in the Psalms. When we’re talking about the happy life, I’m not talking about everything being perfect. I’m talking about a happiness that is rooted in my relationship with the God of the universe. Therefore, I have access to his blessing, even in the midst of the most painful difficulty. That’s the blessed life. That’s the happy life. That begins with faith in Jesus.

So I’m sure there are people who are new to North Hills here today, new to the claims of Jesus, new to God’s Word, new to a church experience, you might be here for the holidays, I would love to invite you to come back every Sunday during December and hear more about what it means to have access to God’s infinite state of blessing.

We’re convinced here that true meaning in life, and therefore true happiness and wholeness of life, is exclusively through belief in Jesus Christ. It is the only access point. Believe in Jesus and follow him and become like him.

Finally, refresh, receive, return blessing to God for his blessing.

Return blessing to God for his blessing. God blesses his people. So bless him in return. Praise him in return. And there’s so many ways we can do this.  One, this is almost so “churchy trite” I feel weird saying it, but spend some time considering what God’s done for you. Not just in passing, not just, oh yeah, there was that time he did this, but a time of meditation going, “Okay, Lord, reveal to me everything that you’ve done.”

And  your brain could go wild. Oh, I woke up. That wasn’t me. I didn’t wake myself up. The Lord that this body shut down, and the way he created, and then he woke it back up. There’s a multitude of things we can mention. My brain went to, there’s kind of this old school church song that some of you might know,

“Count your many blessings
Name them one by one
Count your many blessings
See what God has done.”

It’s a little bit of a weird rhyme, or a simple rhyme, but it sure is a true statement. Spend time, invest, what has God done?

The way we also return blessing, we’re going to practice it together for the rest of this service, is in a couple of ways. We’re going to return blessing, we’re going to praise God, through the Lord’s Supper. We’re going to take communion, as it’s called, this meal that Jesus invented for his followers to remember the price that he paid so that we could have access to God’s forever state of blessing.

This meal is a proclamation of the death of Jesus. And there is in that a sober reminder of what Jesus did. But there’s also within it a joyful celebration. Like this is how I’m okay with God. The body and blood of Jesus, that’s what allows me to be okay with my Creator. So we are both sober about what Jesus did for us and celebrating the reality that we have access to God. We run to the Lord’s Table.

Second thing we’re going to do together, we’re going to sing a couple songs together, then we’re going to sit down, we’re going to pass this out, I’ll come back up, and we’ll take communion together here in a little bit.

After we take communion, in your notes, you’re going to see this statement: Blessed be God, for he has … and then there’s a short blank. During the songs that we sing during communion, I’d love for you to fill that in.

Now you’ll notice I gave you a line this long. That’s so you use that many words, because I want as many people as possible to come up here after communion and say, Blessed be God for he has… Very kindly, I’m not looking for you to tell a story. We’re not looking for a long testimony. I’m looking for you to come up with that form and go, Blessed be God for he has done this for me. And we’re just going to count as many blessings as we can.

I think in first service we had about 20-25 people just come up one after the other. So those of you who are competitive, you can be first by coming up. Blessed be God, for he has …

So we’re going to do the Lord’s Table. We’re going to declare why God is blessed together. And finally, I want you to bless and praise God by singing.

I want you to sing, church. I want you to join these people up here behind me in praising God for all that he has done. I think God’s people particularly bless God together by singing. It is a unique moment where we sing together. Each week a worship leader, Jenny, Davy, Ben, whoever, could get up here and rightfully say, church, stand and let us bless the Lord together. So let’s do that. Would you stand? And let’s bless the Lord who has blessed us.