We know we’re supposed to give thanks with a grateful heart, but sometimes we feel as if we’re just going through the motions of thankfulness, like other things we tend to do in church because that’s what people do in church.  We can lose the feeling of gratitude.  If we’re going to hold on to that feeling, it will be by attention and reflection, gifts of the Spirit.  Scripture is aware of the problem of losing the feeling of thankfulness and also aware of the problem of the loss of thankfulness itself.  Scripture was put into words by God speaking to and through those whom He chose for it.  In a special sense, Scripture is where people and God meet.  As we engage Scripture, the Spirit calls our attention to reasons for giving thanks.

          Why give thanks?  Because God is good, because God’s love endures forever (107:1).  We know God is good because His love endures forever.  We know His love endures forever because God is so good, He’s so good to us.  The psalms make goodness and love vivid, present, by reminding us of God’s actions, God’s plan, God’s provision and blessing, and, sometimes, by reminding us of God’s chastisement and correction.  The psalms are continually meditating upon God’s ongoing work of purifying His people.  Beloved, if you want to experience the maximum of God’s blessings, purify yourselves: be active, willing participants —attentive and reflecting—in the work God proposes to do in you.  I hope we know by now what value the world assigns purity, but do you really know the value God gives purity?  We can no longer have the purity of naiveté; we can have the more durable purity of a Christ-devoted heart.

          The psalms urge us to testimony, to testify before God, one another, to everyone.  We testify to God’s goodness and enduring love by telling the story of all God has done, is doing, and promises to do for us.  The 107^th psalm encourages us particularly to recall our redemption.  Redemption from centuries of slavery the Israelites suffered in Egypt is a constant touchpoint.  This memory resonated powerfully under the oppressive hand of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, then the Romans.  This message of redemption from bondage continues to resonate as faithful ones cherish the remembrance of how God rescued His chosen ones from bondage to sin.  To be bound by sin is to be buried alive under death.  The wages of sin is death.  To be set free, we must be redeemed, by a Redeemer.

          Redemption, redeem, redeemer.  God redeems.  Jesus is our redeemer.  Redeem is another word that we do not use much.  Maybe when we want to redeem a coupon, but that’s confusing: is Jesus our coupon?  Half off?  Buy one, get one free?  The way Scripture speaks of it, redemption is inseparable from prior wrong.  Redemption is for when something has been broken, damaged, hurt.  To redeem is to recover a loss.  Redemption is making good the damage, by payment.  An old term for payment is satisfaction.  Satisfaction repairs the wrong, satisfies the one wronged.  The redeemer is the one who makes the payment, gives the satisfaction, presumably because he has the ability to pay.  To be worthy the name, payment can only be costly.  Payment that costs nothing is no redemption; satisfaction is in the costliness.

          We are called to testify to this redemption, this redeemer, the cost, and the result.

          This 107^th psalm sings of God gathering those He has redeemed “from the lands, from east and west, from north and south” (107:3).  The prophets speak of such a gathering.  Both Isaiah (27:12, 43:5, 56:8) and Jeremiah (3:14) speak of God bringing His own, His chosen, out of one place and another, one from here, another from there, out of one situation of bondage and another.  God has gathered, is gathering, and will gather.

          This psalm reminds us of the exodus journey to the promised land.  It is also reminding us of our own journey, together, to the better country to which Christ is calling us, to which the Spirit is leading us.  There are dangers and temptations along the way, all along the way.  To know there are, to ready yourself to confront them—this is the way of wisdom, the fear of the Lord, walking with Him in the light of His Word.  The psalm would have us hold to this wisdom as to life itself.  It does so by reminding us of the story, of how, along the way, “[s]ome became fools through their rebellious ways and suffered affliction because of their iniquities” (107:17).  Those whom God had redeemed became fools.  They didn’t start off that way.  Something along the way fooled them, or they fooled themselves along the way.  Adam wasn’t a fool at first, but he became one.  The people told Aaron to make a golden calf, and he did.  Solomon was exceptionally wise; he became a royal fool.

          The people of God became fools through their rebellious ways.  Scripture does not take a bright view of the rebel.  What a difference from our time!  We love rebels, with or without a cause—our secret or not so secret heroes—because the opposite, of course, is empire, emperor, that imposed, external authority, chafing us, chaining us, keeping us from the full enjoyment of our natural freedom, hindering us from seeking any and every experience.  As that wise fool Johnny Cash sang, “I went out there in search of experience / To taste and to touch and to feel as much / As a man can.”

          The only rebellion Scripture names is rebellion against God’s Word.  In Leviticus, rebellion is associated both with uncleanness (Lev 16:16) and wickedness (Lev 16:21).  Those who are unclean may not approach God; they are barred from His presence until they purify themselves.  As for wickedness, that’s one of the stronger words Scripture uses to describe those whose living is far from God’s ways, far from His heart.  In our times, we don’t think of many people as wicked, or if we do, it’s good wicked, like the witch in the Broadway show—another misunderstood rebel.  In as much as people are far from God, so far they are wicked.  In Joshua, rebellion is associated with sin (Josh 24:19) and with sinners in Isaiah (Is 1:28).  The rebel rebels against the commands of God (Num 20:24), His law, His torah: His teaching for life; the rebel rebels against God’s Word of Life.  Characteristic of the rebel is a complete lack of trust and obedience (Dt 9:23), in other words, a lack of faith.  Words must be matched by deeds; deeds must match our words.  At least the wicked are consistent: they don’t want God and they don’t want His way.

          The psalm reminds us that the result of walking in one’s own way, of attempting to walk with or without God by one’s own words, brings affliction.  God doesn’t need to send it; walking in iniquity brings it.  Iniquity, another word for sin, means an uneven way, a way of stumbling.  We stumble when we walk in darkness, when we impair ourselves.  Alcohol is a blunt example.  Sin also impairs us, our walking and our ability to walk.  When we hold on to what is right, we will have the joy of walking in the light, walking with Jesus.  When we cling to what is wrong, we will not have joy.  We’ve known wrong.  The world is always there to conduct us into more.

          These stumbling fools “loathed all food and drew near the gates of death” (107:18).  In their wilderness hardship, the only basis for comparison that God’s people had was what they had known before, in bondage.  This freedom that God had given them, this way along which God was taking them, felt miserable, hard, and unfulfilling.  The people wanted what they had known and enjoyed as slaves.  Old habits are hard to shake.  God didn’t give them that food, though He fed them, fed them with manna, His bread from heaven.  But the people whom God had set free, those He had called to freedom with Him, grew tired of having only the same thing every day.  Variety is the spice of life, as they say.  God’s bread grew old, boring, monotonous.  They craved different food, and temptation knew it.

          The food God gives is true food; the drink with which God slakes our thirst is true drink.  Jesus offers the water of life.  He is the bread from heaven.  We eat the food the world provides and we remain hungry, as though such food were no food at all, not food to satisfy our hunger, not food that fulfills the purpose of food, the reason and purpose of our hunger.  What is the purpose of our hunger?  From where does our hunger come?  Eating what our wrong-minded hearts crave here, we grow weaker, sicker.  We draw near the gates of death.  As we fill ourselves with what the world gives, we eat our way to the gates of death.  Those gates are wide, and wide open.  People see this food that God holds out to them, offers to give them, freely, abundantly.  It isn’t food to their liking, not to their taste, a little too bland, perhaps, or too fiery!—too hard to chew or digest—not the sort of food they crave, but to go without this food is to starve, to deprive your life of what it most needs for living.  The world is eager to tell us all about what we most need for living; people are all too eager to listen.

          Beloved, we find ourselves continually in need of the redemption God offers in Jesus Christ, alive in the power of the Spirit.  We find more often than we like, or would like to admit, that we are taking the way of temptation.  The psalm is telling this ancient story, ancient even in the day the psalm was first sung, because the story remains our story, the story of God’s chosen ones, in the wilderness of this world.  With them, let us call out to the Lord in our trouble.  Just as He saved His people then, He will save, still, today.  Let’s call out to Him before we get too deep into trouble.  Some will never call out to God, until they’re deep in trouble, trouble of their own making and choosing.  They don’t need God until they do.

          God is good.  His love endures forever.  As we call out to Him, He sends salvation, redeems us.  We can feel as if His redemption costs us something: our pleasures and passionate pursuits, our deeply held, world-shaped convictions.  We know we are expected to conform ourselves to God’s Word, and we just don’t see why God’s Word can’t conform to our will; we just know we’re right . . . or at least not wrong.  Salvation, redemption, grace, mercy, love—this is all God’s summons to be conformed to His will, His way, by actively joining with Him in His work of purifying His people.

          “He sent out His Word and healed them; He rescued them from the grave” (107:20).  He saves those who cry out to Him.  He hears.  He sends His Word.  His Word heals, is healing.  My wounds are deep, beloved, and many, and I don’t yet do all that I can to let them heal.  How about you?  Yet I know and rejoice that God is even now healing me, healing us.  It’s a long process.  It won’t be finished even by the end of this life, but we will enter the life to come perfectly healed.  I don’t look to be perfectly healed in this life, sisters and brothers.  I look to be rescued from the grave: I’ll go there, oh, yes, but I won’t remain there.  Sin spoke its death sentence; God spoke release, freedom, and life.  Stumbling iniquity tumbles into the grave and is fulfilled there.  God has called us to walk in His light.  Not because I deserve it, since I’m such a kind and good person, or because I’ve been paying my dues regularly for years.  Because of who God is, because of his unfailing love, fulfilling His promise to Himself.  We’re watching God in action, beloved!  It’s pretty amazing.

          As we draw closer not only to Easter, glorious day, but to the days recalling the events that lead to Easter, take time, make time, to recall God’s “wonderful deeds for mankind” (107:21).  Let us heed the message of this psalm, and “sacrifice thank offerings and tell of His works with songs of joy” (107:22).  Our thank offering isn’t confined to or defined by the offering we put in the plate.  Our thank offering is also, even more, in our testifying, our singing. “The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart, a fountain ever springing! / All things are mine since I am his!  How can I keep from singing?”

          Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!