Responding To God's Awesome Reign · Psalm 97:1-12 · August 2, 2026

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Good morning, everyone.

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So please see you here.

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When I was driving here, it felt like a few miles further than last time I was here. But it's for sure worth a drive. I'm Pastor Cliff. I thought I had the privilege of meeting you. It's so wonderful to see folks. Well, I always see folks from other campuses that are here, and which is really cool to me. So I think people are getting the word out that there's well, they're they finally got some good preaching at First Baptist Church. And so if you want to hear it, come to Oxford campus. So anyway, we know we know that's true. God using Pastor Garrett in such a wonderful way. I'm sorry to hear Pastor Jackson's not feeling better. I was at youth camp with him this week. He looked like Casper the friendly worship pastor. He had like Elmer's glue complexion on his face, poor guy. So anyway, but appreciate Charles Foster, man. He is ready to roll at a moment's notice. You know, we had, thank you, Pastor Charles. Stephen, we gotta get Pastor Stephen, our he's our lead worship pastor for all four of our campuses. And we had one pastor was out that was sort of maybe his wife's having a baby. And he's like, pray for Amy Higgins, Riley, Smiley Riley's wife. She is in labor. And so he was gonna be out this morning. Jackson called in sick. And then the uh director for uh orchestra at the downtown campus was out. So Pastor Stephen had him a morning. A morning to trust the Lord. I okay, by the way, do we have a picture of that uh rear view mirror up there? Yes, have you seen that? Objects in the mirror maybe actually are closer than they appear. Y'all remember seeing that? Now it's on the passenger side, not on the driver's side normally. The driver's side is more flat, but the passenger side rear view mirror is curved around. It's curved around to avoid blind spots. I remember when I was training my boys to drive, I said, listen, when you turn, when you're when you're passing or when you're changing lanes, always crane your neck around. And one of the I had a few strong-willed boys and said, gentlemen, as we're as you're being trained to drive, the one thing you can't do at any moment is talk back to your father. Save that you know for home. Catch up on your talking about, you know. But I need you to say yes, sir, and do whatever I said. So Steve Stephen was probably my strongest will. There was a contest where he had the strongest will. But Steven usually has his way to the top, and I said, Stephen, when you turn, if you're changing lanes, especially if you're turning into the right, what do you do? He goes, Crane my neck. And I said, There is something called a blind spot. You think you can see it, but you can't. So the rear view mirror is poised and curved in such a way to avoid the blind spot. And so they have to put the thing up there that says the objects are closer than they appear. Now, the objects are really small. The vehicles behind you are small looking. When something looks really small, what does that normally tell us? They're far away. Do you like looking at the swimming pools in an airplane? When you're landing, I love seeing that. I love seeing the pools, the lakes. It looks like a little Lego set down below. And the reason they look small is because they're far away. Now, what looks close? This is pretty common sense sermon so far, isn't it? What looks close? Things that are near. Here's the problem in the spiritual life and our walk with God. God feels far away. He seems like he's way up there somewhere. And you know what seems real close? Trouble. Trials, enemies, oppression, sin. That's right next to us. Especially if we stare at them. Have you ever had such a trial that all you could do is stare at it all day long? And you try to look to heaven and you then you look back down and stare again? Well, what seems really big? Your trouble. And evil. How many of you are kind of tired of watching the news? Because there's not been a good star in the news in several years. And you you leave the news channel and you're going, man, this is the most evil world. I can't even picture the world I live in anymore. Well, it's right close by. We're staring at evil. Of course, it's going to feel all-consuming. But, brothers and sisters, if you know Christ, you know that God is not merely transcendent. He is transcendent, but he's not only transcendent, he's also imminent. Meaning he dwells within your heart if you're his child. He spiritually dwells within you. He's right nearby. He's not little bitty and way off. He is awesome and right next to us. I'm glad we're looking at the Psalm that was just read to us today, Psalm chapter 97, by the way. Some of you know that Psalms has 150 chapters in it. And this is a temporary terminal series. We go back to 1 Peter, the first Sunday in September. Y'all must like Psalms. I think I'd get some amens, but anyway. Psalm 97 is a royal coronation psalm that describes the sovereignty of God. And it reminds us that God is much bigger than we think He is. And our trouble is much smaller than we think it is. Big God with comparatively small challenges. But we're going to talk today, and the title of the message is Responding to God's Awesome Reign. And we're going to begin by reading verse 1 of Psalm 97. It says this, the Lord reigns. Let the earth rejoice, let the many coastlands be glad. I love the arresting way it begins with three words. What a powerful truth. Do you know where we get the word sovereignty from? In the middle of that word, reign tea. It reminds us that God reigns. Meaning that he rules over all things. To quote the late RC sprawl, there is not, quote, one maverick molecule in the universe. Just like Jesus said in Matthew 10, 29, not a sparrow falls to the ground apart from the will of your Father in heaven. Some of you are going, now wait a minute. I wish I didn't know that. You're trying to say God's in control of everything in this world. Yes, I am. Well, why is the world so crazy? God's got, to quote Desiernez Jr., God's got some splaining to do. If he's sovereign, why is the world so crazy? Well, he is good, he is wise, and he is loving and he is faithful, but he has created people that feel unfortunate to us at times with free agency. He created a world where evil is allowed to temporarily exist. And we certainly wish, sometimes for our own sake, that it didn't. But the problem is we often look at the evil he allows rather than the sovereignty he possesses. If you believe that not a sparrow falls to the ground apart from the will of your father, then we can trust in him. I heard one preacher put it this way: if the Lord is sovereign, it means there is calm in the chaos, there is purpose in the pain, and there is hope on the horizon. It was Charles Spurgeon that used to say, if I did not believe God were in control of my sufferings, I would be most depressed. Because if God were not in control of them, then there would be no way to get, to have good from them. That's actually comforting if you think about it that way. When God is in control of the suffering that comes into our life, it's a world where sickness exists, where evil is allowed, but a good, sovereign, wise, loving God reigns over it in the most ultimate sense, and he's plotting for the good of his people. I bet if I were to pass the mic around, I'd get a whole lot of people that would tell me that they can look back at circumstances that they never thought there was one bit of good that could ever come from it. Only to see the sovereign God reign and do his work again. That's why the next phrase shouldn't surprise us if you know God when it says, Let the earth rejoice. We can rejoice. We can have a glad-heartedness about us if you're convinced that the sovereign God rules. Now notice the scope of his desire there. It says, Let the earth rejoice. Have you ever felt you had some news that was so good that you just couldn't keep it to yourself? That you had to share with other people. You know, at when uh the Oxford campus, when many of you kind people came to our house on one of those Wednesday parties a few weeks ago, we had just had everybody in our family up at July 4th. And there's a big picture of all the kids and grandkids, etc., right in the entryway. And everybody that came in, because you because the flow of the crowd goes to the right. And y'all, I moved you to the left. You remember that? If you came to my house, I said, here's our family. Mrs. Lee was wondering why the line was so slow on the entrance. It's because I forced them to look at our family. Because I'm so happy about them. I love them so much. I want you all to share in that joy. Have you ever had some news that was too good not to share it? That's what the love of God is, brothers and sisters. Let the earth rejoice. We don't want people only in Marion County, only in Leesburg, only in Oxford to hear about the good news. We want the whole earth to rejoice. And he doubles down and says, you know, let's not even forget, not just about planet Earth itself, let's not forget about the little hidden areas known as islands. And he says, let the many coastlands be glad. We want the big pockets of population to hear about God's love, and we want the hidden, forgotten peoples of the world to hear about God's love. What an expansive desire. And so the blank, again, number one is desire others to know his reign. Recently we had a missionary that came to our church. You've seen several what we call mission prayer focuses on our screen where different missionaries will come in and ask us to pray for them. We'll also send other, we'll send people from our church. I hope that many people from Oxford campus in the years ahead will join one of our mission teams on a short-term trip to partner with one of our missionaries we pray for around the world. But this missionary was going to Istanbul, he and his wife. I think they just left recently. Young guy, full of the word of God. And he he quoted John 10, 16. John 10.16 says that there are many of my sheep are in other folds. I must go and gather them and bring them in. So what Christ was saying is that I have people in other areas that I'm gonna share my love with, and I'm gonna bring them in. And what the missionary stood there and said is that we believe in Istanbul that God has sheep there, and we're gonna share the gospel with them so he can bring them in. Now, one thing we did at my house, for those of you who are at my house for the Oxford party, I think the other campuses are jealous, man, by the way. Um, is that we had a hoot nanny. We sang about 50 hymns that night. And one of them, one of the best of the hymns is I'll hail the power of Jesus' name. I was thinking of that this week. Matter of fact, Rod, do we have that on the screen? There's one of the verses about I'll hail the power of Jesus' name. If we don't have oh, there we go. It sounds like the hymn writer just read Psalm 971. And if you know it, sing this with me.

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Let every kindred every tribe on this to restore to him majesty and cry him to him just scribe and cry on him.

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What a powerful hymn. What a great verse. Let's continue looking at this psalm. Our second principle this morning about responding to God's awesome reign is number two in your outline, and that's this contemplate the scope of his reign. The next several verses are filled with beautiful imagery, and the imagery in the Bible is to cause us to think one of the things I'm gonna be doing on my vacation this next week and for the next few weeks is I'm gonna do more meditating. And when I say meditate, I mean to contemplate on scripture. Let the images and the truths of scripture just fill and flood your mind. And verses two through six, and then verse nine, are filled with some beautiful imagery that describe the massive scope of God's reign. First of all, in verse two, clouds and thick darkness are all around him. This could be a reference to the Lord in the book of Exodus, kind of governed or hidden by a cloud. I wouldn't be surprised that it's also a way of describing verse 1, the Lord reigns, that clouds and thick darkness all around him, in that this there is mystery that surrounds God's sovereignty. And I think that there's a sense where we should be more willing to accept that God is shrouded in some mystery. It doesn't mean we can't understand anything about God. God's revealed several truths about him in his word that we can grasp. But I remember I did a funeral over a decade ago, and it was one of the most heartbreaking funeral I've ever done. And it was an expectant mother that was killed in a car accident. It was the first child of this grieving widower. And I was in China when the accident happened, and I, you know, and came back and ended up doing the funeral. And I'm like, what on earth am I gonna say? I have, I actually get a lot of joy doing funerals of people that are ready to go to heaven. They walk with God for decades upon decades, and it's like this big celebration. But you you can imagine all hope was pushed out of this young man's heart. And I said, you know, there's uh my text was Deuteronomy 29, 29, and it says the secret things belong to the Lord our God. But the things revealed to us belong to us and our our children forever. God keeps secrets. And one of the things I said is that I have a file in my mind for things I just can't understand. And I call it the 29-29 file. It's Deuteronomy 29-29. The secret things belong to the Lord our God. You might need to get you a file. And to me, it's not a lack of faith, it's an acceptance of our finiteness. It's an acceptance that we can't figure God out, but we know what his word says and we trust what his word says. And sometimes the fact that God has thick darkness all around him does obviously it's not a reference to evil. It means there is mystery shrouded in the greatness of God. Next, righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. You ever been curious of what a new leader is going to do? Could be in a church, could be in a government, could be in a business. You're wondering, is this guy gonna be corrupt? Because most leaders seem to get pretty self-centered or corrupt after a while. Um, sometimes you move to Washington, D.C., and every value you've ever had goes out the door, it seems like. But what does God's rule look like? It says this righteousness and justice are the very foundation of his throne. All of God's sovereign actions flow from those two things: doing the right thing and doing the just thing. That which is just and fair in God's eyes, not in the world's eyes, is always done by the sovereign God. Now, also we got to admit that part of God being sovereign is God being the one who judges. Last week, Pastor Garrett shared with you from Psalm 94.1, and one of the things we talked about was vengeance. And the reason that we can't take revenge on others, God did not entrust that role to us. Some of you are like, man, oh man, I wish there was a suggestion box in heaven where I could say, Lord, I'd be really good at revenge. Let me at it. Actually, you wouldn't be that good. One, we don't have the emotional capacity that God has to govern our emotions. But also, God sees more and knows more. And that's even putting it lightly. He sees and knows a whole lot more. And I guess what I want to encourage you with is don't be angry and rebuff the fact that God judges, that God exercises righteous retribution. Verse 3 says, fire goes before him and burns up his adversaries all around. This could have had a temporal reference to the enemies of the Lord in the Old Testament, and it certainly has an eternal aspect of eternal separation from God in hell. And the fact that God is so holy, he also sees all and knows all that the sovereign Lord is wise and good for him to bring judgment. Verse 4, his lightning lights up the world and the earth sees and trembles. This is just a matter of God's one, his brightness, but also his holiness, if we look at it long enough, should cause us all to be in awe of. In verse 5, the mountains melt like wax before the presence of the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth. God's the creator of all things. He's the creator of all things, and some of the things he created are very majestic. Anyone love the mountains out there? We don't have many mountains around here except for Mount Dora, which is not that majestic. We're going to the mountains this week. And I'm going to think of this verse. The mountains melt like wax. You've seen wax melt if there's a great flame to it. In other words, God's majestic, awesome creation even bows down to their creator. Compared to the greatness of God, the mountains don't stand a chance to survive. In verse 6, the heavens proclaim his righteousness. Who created the heavens? That's Genesis 1:1. God created the heavens of the earth, and so the heavens themselves speak of how right God is. You ever just seen a beautiful sunset over some Florida waters? God's just showing off back there, isn't he? But they're also proclaiming the fact that the one who created this is the right one. He's the righteous one and does right things. And all the people see his glory. God's glory is available to our sight, to our spiritual sight, if we would open up our hearts to it. I guess verse 9 is a summary so far of everything that the psalmist has said. Man, I'm really proud of myself because I've not said that David wrote this psalm yet, because he didn't. At least this is an unknown. So I've been saying, anytime there's an asaph or an unknown psalm, I said David all summer long, but I just said the psalmist, yay. Verse 9 for you, O Lord, are most high over all the earth. You are exalted far above all gods. Man, what a beautiful verse. Question. How eager are you for God to be glorified? Do you have more zeal for people to know how great you are or how great God is? It says here in verse 9 that he is not just high, he is the most high above all the earth. You are exalted above all gods. Some say that Paul the apostle was maybe thinking of this verse when he wrote Ephesians chapter 1, verse 21 that says, God is exalted above any title that can be given. One of the things we should ask God for is a great desire for his glory. Deepen our desire for your name, for your renown. Give us a greater passion for you to be the center of attention in our universe. Now, verses 1 through 9 has beautifully set forth the fact that the Lord reigns and what that means for us. Verses 10, 11, and 12 are now talk about what kind of thing should be in our life as a result of God being the one who reigns. Verse 10 says this O yeah. You who love the Lord hate evil. Any of you ladies ever do any cross-stitching back in the day? That was a there was a big heyday for cross-stitching, wasn't it? You would see beautiful cross-stitching in Christian bookstores, which have gone the way of the dodo birds and the dinosaurs, Christian bookstores. But we used to have several verses in our house that were, you know, beautifully made. And my guess is if you had a verse on above your kitchen sink, it didn't say Psalm 97, 10. Let those who love the Lord hate evil. No, you had 1 John 4.8. God is love. You had 1 Thessalonians 5.18, and everything give thanks. This one doesn't get as much press. Hate evil. But let's before we get to the hate evil part, let's look at the first part. Oh, you who love the Lord, let's be grateful that God is knowable and lovable. In other words, he's able to be known so much by his creation, those who come to faith in Christ, that we can know him and know him to such a degree that we love him. Man, this morning I got early to the service at downtown 8:30, and I've been the pastor of our church for 19 years now. And some of the people I've known for 19 years. And I love them so much. I love you all so much. And many of you don't even know, but I want you to know as a shepherd of God, it is a blessing to know people and to love them and care about them. Have you ever had a hard time getting to know somebody? I went to youth camp this week. Let me tell you, yeah, there's some people, there's some girls that give you the stink eye. Hey, honey, what's your name? All right. Don't like creepy older men. All right, let's be cool. All right. But God is knowable to the point that you can be able to say, I love him so much. I love him so much. Now, when you deeply get to love people, you begin to have sympathy for what they love and what they don't like. Mrs. Lee and I've been married 34 years now, and we're real different people on the little stuff. And I love her so much, but I just can't like some of the stuff she likes. She's from ABQ, she's from Albuquerque, New Mexico. And I'm from the People's Republic of Texas. They're just one state right next to each other, but they're real different worlds. If you've ever been to Albuquerque, they have this little green thing, this little green plant on everything that goes into your mouth called green chilies. You go to McDonald's, you get green chili burger. You go to Pizza Hut, you get green chili on your pizza, on your toast, on your eggs, on your brownies, in your milkshakes. Not really. But most everything is filled with little green stuff. We didn't do that back in the motherland. We didn't do that. And I've had plenty of green chilies by this wonderful cook, by this wonderful lady, but they go down not as pleasant for me as they do for her. It's just like a hot food sunny for her. But I love her so much, I really want to love green chilies more than I do. She also likes order and cleanliness more than is natural for me. Like she, there's nobody that likes to make the bed more than Mrs. Lee. She makes it so tight, every night I have to kick the covers out. She likes to sleep like a burrito at Chipotle, just tied up. And I like to be a little more loose, right? But those are not that big a deal. By the way, if you're married, let the little stuff be little stuff, would you? Why'd you gotta make why we gotta make such a big deal out of green chilies and making the bed? I'll tell you what though, the big stuff, that girl loves Jesus with all she's got. And that's what attracted me to her. She's also very spicy, the quesadilla. She's also a very good-looking woman, but that wasn't what drew me, was how much she loved God right in her heart. She loves people. I love people not as good as her, but the things that really matter, we are one on. Now, how do you learn to love God so much that you love what he loves and hate what he hates? Here's the thing. I bet if you got kids, I bet you taught your kids not to hate. Well, Christ says to love people, right? Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. We're not supposed to hate. I would say this, we're not supposed to hate people. But we are supposed to hate something, and that is this evil. Oh, Pastor, I hate evil. I hate when those evil people mess with me. Well, it's not terribly wrong to hate evil done in the world. David said, indignation grips him because of the wicked who've forsaken your law. Psalm 119, 53. He hated the evil he saw in others, and that's good to a point. But brother and sister, do you hate your evil? It's easy to hate our brother's sin. Do you know why we hate our brother's sin? Because they got bad, foul sin. Our sin, we we we sin in the sweet, you know, the sweet, winsome way. Kind of the fresh smelling errors, mistakes. I think, I think it's evil. We should hate our evil. Have you asked God to give you his attitude towards sin at all times? Part of the problem with hating evil is that we so naturally we move toward it. I don't guess any parent here ever had to teach their kids how to disobey them. There's no classes in children's ministry on that one, right? We were talking to our daughter-in-law, she was telling Miss Lee this week that our oldest grandson, his name is Jack, he's about to be five years old next in the winter. And he has two younger sisters, and so she's telling him how to be a gentleman. Jack, be a gentleman. Gentlemen, we young men, men are supposed to take care of women, open the door, be kind, be polite. You you are a gentleman. I think that's a great thing to teach him. But he does know how to make the application because she called everybody to the table for lunch. He he goes up right in front of her and says, gentlemen, first. We can take good things and make them bad real quick, can't we? Why? Because we got evil in our heart. Here's the deal. Quit being so easy on your own sin. We're not supposed to coddle evil. We're supposed to hate it. And I don't mean don't get, don't trust God's mercy. When I say, I'm not trying to say beat yourself up more. I'm not trying to say that, trust God's mercy more, but call sin in your own life what it really is, sin. My youngest son, we moved here when he was five. And he's a little more Floridian than any of the other boys. And I mean in every way. Like one day when he was 16 years old, he's the only one at the house at that point. He had a little beat-up pickup truck he got from his uh kind of a hand-me-down, and he saw a baby gator on the side of the row. What's a good Floridian gonna do if you're 16 and have a pickup truck? He got out, picked it up, wrapped some string around the boy, the gator's mouth, put it in the back truck, and brought it home to show his parents, and expected us to be so proud of him. He brings it inside the house.

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Look, look, mommy. Boy, what are you doing? That's a gator, that's going to kill you.

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It's so little, it's cute. Get that thing. Hey, if you work for the law enforcement, we have dealt with this. I'm very sorry we did that, okay? There's lots of problems with that. But one of the biggest problems is gators, no matter how comfortable you are around them, are not to be coddled, are they? I don't know how good that string was. It didn't look good enough to me. About to get some duct tape on that boy. Well, I think we I think we act like sin's no big deal. You can play with it. Bring it around. It's cute. No, it's not. Listen, we're to have God's attitude towards sin at all times. And you and I don't have to guess what sin is. If you're a person of this book of the Word of God, it is real clear what it is. And a lot of times when there's a gray area, we know it because the Spirit dwells within us and is convicting of that which does not honor Him. So love what God loves and hate what is evil. He preserves the lives of His saints, He delivers them from the hand of the wicked. It doesn't mean that we don't have casualties and He preserves our bodies at all times, but He is the one who keeps us going spiritually. He's the one that will ultimately deliver us from the hand of the wicked. So that third principle, align your affections with his reign. Align your affections. Love what he loves, hate what he hates. Two more verses. Light is sown for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart, verse 11. Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous, and give thanks to his holy name. He's now calling for God's people to rejoice and give thanks in light of the sovereign God. Have you ever been down and someone looks at you kind of a little bit too optimistic for your taste, for your mood, and say, hey, cheer up, buddy. Well, there's a time and a place to say that. But if you're a believer, there's a whole lot of reasons to believe that there is optimism available. There's plenty of reasons to know that we have stuff to be grateful for and stuff to be joyful about. We just were told that he preserved the lives of his saints. He's going to deliver from the hand of the evil. In verse 11, he says, light stone for the righteous. In other words, when you get right with God, you start seeing things differently. He gives light to our spiritual eyes, things you didn't see before, and joy for the upright in heart. Man, it doesn't mean that when you do what God says, you get right with him, that trouble is no longer there. Sometimes we experience suffering because of our obedience. But he comforts us in the midst of those times of suffering for obedience with joy. That inner, indescribable sense of the bliss that comes from knowing him. Those who are right-hearted are glad-hearted, Spurgeon said. In verse 12, rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous. I know a few weeks ago Pastor Garrett shared with you Psalm 86. In verse 4 of Psalm 86, the scripture says, Grant joy to your servant. For to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. Have you ever felt bad for praying for joy for yourself when there's a long list of people that are going through deeper suffering than you are? Listen, pray for all the list, but don't neglect to pray for your own joy. David said, Grant joy to your servant. He knew that if he was glad in God, he'd be more likely to obey God and would be more willing to glorify God because satisfied souls glorify him. That last phrase and give thanks to his holy name. I hope that God will grow us all in overflowing with thankfulness. Some of you are going, Pastor, it's just August. We thank God in November, so give us a few months. I mean, I'm glad for the American holiday of Thanksgiving, but if shame on us if we wait to get grateful until the last week of November. Look, a Christian is called to thank God every single day. We are called, it's the will of God that we be grateful people. I remember when I'd get a gift. My mother was so proper. If anybody gave me a gift for my birthday or Christmas or any time, she handed me the next day, she handed me some stationery and an envelope. And this boy didn't deserve the gift sometimes. I'm like, oh mom, and sometimes our gratitude feels that way. Thank you, God. I guess I'm supposed to thank you. You know, look, we have so many reasons to be grateful, but our eyes are often closed to God's goodness. Did you hear about the kids that were praying for a swing set? And their mom, they wanted a swing set, they couldn't afford one, and so the mom led them every night to pray for her. Lord, give us a swing set, give us a swing set. And finally, some friends of theirs were getting a new swing set, so they gave them a nice swing set that was in good shape, but they were getting something different. And so that they installed it. The kids played on all day long. Mom was so excited to teach them the spiritual lesson of God's faithfulness and said, Boys and girls, what do we need to say to God tonight after he gave us that swing set? And one boy said, Tell him to cancel our order because we've got one now. I think that's how we roll instead of thank you, God. The blank there on number four is be grateful for his reign. Some of you know the name Nancy Damas Walgamuth. She was married to publisher and author Robert Walgamuth. It passed away a few months ago. And one of the themes of the ministry of Nancy is God's joy and gratitude. She wrote a book called Choosing Gratitude. And one of the things she shared is when her husband got cancer about six years ago, it was right during COVID, they had a lanai in the back room of their house that was a sunroom, and they they changed the name of it to the gratitude room. And they created a gratitude wall, and they took sticky notes, and every night they go back there and think of a couple things to write on a sticky note and put up there. And she said, when he got real sick, there were some days it was harder to think of something. And so they would look back on there or things that they thank God for the past, thank God for those things again, and then they'd get more ideas of what to thank God for. Have you ever noticed that thankfulness stirs up thankfulness? And thankfulness stirs up joy. Nancy Dimas Walgamuth said, gratitude literally became our life preserver. We would have been taken under with the trials we went through, but gratitude caused us to see God's goodness. Recently I was in my devotional life, I was reading Jeremiah chapter 17, verse 5. It says, Cursed is the man who depends on his own flesh for strength. And then it says in verse 6, he will not see prosperity when it comes. Have you ever been so self-reliant that good things are right under your nose and you don't see them? You ever look for your wallet or your keys and they're right under your nose? And you were looking all around, but you couldn't see them right there. That's what God's goodness is like. It's right there. And the Bible says, give thanks to the sovereign Lord who reigns. He has not been unfair to you. He has only been good to you when you see it from his perspective. The Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 9 15, thanks be to God for his indescribable gift. And that indescribable gift is salvation free in Christ. It is the gift of what Christ did by dying for us on the cross and rising in victory from the grave. It's the gift of eternal life available to all by trusting Christ alone for salvation. In a moment, we're going to enter into a time of invitation. And some of our leaders here at Oxford campus will be in front, ready to receive you for prayer. Some of you, our hope is that you'd be coming forward and say, you know what? I thought I knew Christ, but I realized recently I don't know him personally. I know about him, but I don't know him in a personal way. I want to receive his gift. Others are here, and maybe you've never been immersed and baptized scripturally after conversion. And our those here would love to talk and pray with you about that as well. Some may have some prayer requests, and you want one of your church leaders to pray over you, they would love to do that as well. So as we let's take a moment and bow together and enter into a time of response. And as our pastors are here, ready to receive any that come, uh Brother Foster will likely begin singing in a moment. And I'm gonna say a word of prayer. And after I say amen, you come this morning as the Lord leads. Living God, we humble ourselves before you. We rejoice that you reign. The Lord reigns, let the earth rejoice. We rejoice because you reign. And we give you thanks for this reminder from your word today. Help us, teach us to be overflowing with gratitude. In the only name, the mighty name, Jesus' name we pray. Amen. You come this morning as the Lord leads.