Well, good morning, Forward. Happy 91st birthday Forward
Church. You're looking pretty good for
91 years old. I got to say, if you're new here
today, I want to welcome you. We're thrilled that you've
joined us here today. This is a little family party
that we're having and we hope that you feel welcome and
joining the party with us. A couple things I want to just
say before we get into the message today.
First of all, the other day my wife said, Kirk, I know
Celebration Sunday is a big day, so I bought you a brand new
shirt and I want you to wear it on Celebration Sunday.
Don't get excited yet, Andrew. It gets better.
So I get here, I put on the
shirt like a good husband should do when his wife tells him to.
And then I'm up here at before the service starts helping to
get things ready for the baptisms that are happening a
little bit later on. And I look over and I see
another guy who has the exact same shirt on.
And then I see another guy who has the exact same shirt on.
Then I discovered that the women in my discipleship group lobby
together. Guys, stand up all the guys in
my discipleship group. So you can thank Katie Gibbons
for that. 2nd, we have a new member to welcome to the Forward
Church family. Would you just join me in
welcoming Sandra Gouda as member of our church?
And last, we have a ministry here in the church called the
Forward Leadership School. And this year we have several
people who have completed a three-year journey of walking
through our leadership school program, our second group to
graduate. Now not all of them are able to
be here today, but those of you who are here, if you would just
come on up. We have a few of them who are
here, and I just want to give them a gift and recognize them
for their three years here. So we have Jared and Lisa, and
there's Nick back there. No, you can go back down.
Jared. I know you don't want to.
Thank God, Lisa. Hey, Nick.
Thanks, man. All right.
Yeah, take your Bibles open up to Psalm 138.
That's page 547. If you're using one of the
Bibles in the seat around you, Psalm 138.
And just as you're opening there, I want to ask you this
question. What are the best celebrations
that you've ever been part of? Maybe you think about a cultural
celebration. I, I live in Paris, and in Paris
we have different cultural celebrations that happened.
The Paris Fair is the biggest waste of money that you will
ever have. We also have the Maple Syrup
Festival and I know some of our people I ran into at the Maple
Syrup Festival in Paris. It is like such a bizarre small
town thing. The Maple Syrup festival in
Paris had all these display booths out and all these food
trucks and two tables that actually had Maple syrup.
And so, yeah, we've got these cultural celebrations that that
we have. Maybe it's an individual
achievement in your life, maybe a graduation after finishing
school. I think that the best
celebrations are the celebrations where you share a
common passion with the other people who are in the room,
whether it's your family, when you celebrate Christmas or
birthdays together, whether it's some type of a group
achievement. There's just something about
winning together as a group that feels really special.
Well, over the last number of years here at Forward, we have
marked the end of June as Celebration Sunday, a time for
us to celebrate together as a church family.
But I I want to make something really clear right up front.
We are not here today to celebrate our achievements.
This is not a day for us to pat ourselves on the back and say
look how great Forward churches because everything that we are
seeking to celebrate today is simply because of the goodness
of God. The Bible tells us in James
chapter one that every good and perfect gift is from above,
coming down from the Father of lights who's who does not change
like shifting shadows. Everything that is good about
this church family is because of the goodness of God.
Every good gift we have received is because of Him.
Now when you have a name like Forward Church, it's really easy
to keep looking to the future and to say what's the next
thing? What's the next mountain to
climb? What's the next vision to
accomplish? What's the next ministry?
How can we meet the needs of more people and reach more
people with the good news of the gospel?
But one of the most critical things that we can do as a
church is to have a habit of pausing and looking back and
enjoying what God has done amongst us.
Now, when someone's been good to you, there's a lot of different
responses that you can have. You can sit there and go, well,
I did a lot of the work already. They just kind of helped out a
bit. That would not be the right
response. With God, you, you can take it
for granted and you can just go, well, of course, God's supposed
to be good. Of course he's going to be good
and show his goodness to us. And so you just learn to take it
for granted. It's a little bit like when you
were a kid at Christmas and, and, and in the first early
years of Christmas, you get super excited at all the things
that you got at Christmas time. But then as time went on, you
started to go, it's Christmas and there's more presents at
Christmas and you just assume you're going to get more
presents at Christmas time and you start taking it for granted
that it's always going to be there.
Or maybe your response to someone's goodness to you is
just a polite thank you. It's like sitting at the dinner
table and, and saying thank you for supper because your mom or
your dad told you you need to say thank you for supper, right?
You just, it's the polite thing to do.
Well, Psalm 138 gives us a really specific way to respond
to God's goodness. And it's this.
The goodness of God should compel us to thank Him with our
whole heart. Look at verse one of Psalm 138.
He says, I will give you thanks with all my heart.
I will sing your praise before the heavenly beings.
There is no polite nice thank you going on.
There's just this deep sense of gratitude and being thankful it
comes from the depths of his being to express his gratitude
to God. And I love this description
because it doesn't leave room for half hearted thank yous.
Like, I wonder how many of us have gotten so used to good
gifts from God, we've just started to take them for
granted. But I wonder how many of us
settle for a polite thank you instead of a wholehearted God.
I can't believe you've been so, so good to us.
When you understand that what makes a gift a gift is you don't
deserve it. You can't help but be thankful
from the bottom of your heart. You know, I, I got to tell you,
I've grown up in church my entire life.
I've had the privilege of traveling across Canada and I've
seen other churches up close. I've been in ministry for 30
years, over 30 years. Let me tell you, we should never
take for granted the good gifts that God has given to this
church. We, we are a church family who
lives every single day in the goodness of God.
What? What God has blessed us with is
not always the story of other churches.
Now, are we a perfect church? Absolutely not.
No, we're not a perfect church. But our perfection isn't what
determines the goodness of God. The goodness of God just comes
from the character in the heart of who God is.
It's not about how well we've performed for God.
Have we made mistakes? Sure, we've made mistakes.
It's not about that. It's about His goodness, His
kindness towards us and for David, he just needs to he's
compelled to express in praise how thankful he is.
And it's not just his words. His actions also say it.
He he's so thankful. He says, I can't just stop
praising God. Verse one, I will sing your
praise before the heavenly beings.
So I have to sing about your goodness.
I got to tell you, like sitting up here at the front listening
to you worship and sing praises to God this morning was amazing
to listen to you. Some of us, we live in a state
of, hey, it's enough for me just to be thankful on the inside.
I don't need to kind of say it too loudly and proudly.
That's not where David lands. He's like he lands in the space
of if you're wholeheartedly thankful, you cannot contain it
on the inside. You have to praise God.
But last Sunday I was in Brant, and man, it was just so cool
listening to the group of people in that little room lifting up
their praises and worship to God.
And when we come together, we praise the one who's been so
good to us. But it's not limited to praising
God when we're together as a church.
Notice the words. I will sing your praise before
the heavenly beings. Some Bible translations use the
word God's there. David praises the goodness of
God in the face of false gods. What David is saying is I don't
just praise God on Sunday when we're together as a church
family. I praise God all the time when
I'm out in the community, when I'm at work, when I'm with my
family, wherever I'm interacting because there are false gods
everywhere and I'm just going to go everywhere I can go and
proclaim how good God is in the face of the false gods.
To tell them you guys are useless compared to the one true
almighty God. That's the kind of affection
that is stirred up inside of David.
He has to proclaim his praise of God.
And it's not just how loud he sings and how loud he proclaims
it. He also says he has to bow down
and quietly give thanks to God. Verse 2 says I will bow down
toward your holy temple. Neither of these expressions of
praise are very Baptist. Now, for those of you who don't
know, forward is a Baptist Church.
That might shock some of you. We're a Baptist Church.
But neither of these expressions of praise kind of land naturally
for us as Baptists. A lot of us are like, I don't
know about that whole praising God out loud thing.
And a whole bunch of us are like, you want me to bow down,
get on my knees and worship before God.
That that feels like an expression that I don't feel
real comfortable with. They're not very Baptist, but
they are very biblical. See, I, I want to not only give
you permission to praise and worship God in this way, but I
want you to consider this. We're nothing without God.
We don't exist as a church community apart from Jesus.
Our salvation is in him alone. He's the one that has brought us
together. He's the one that has rescued us
from sins. He's the one that has saved us.
He's the one who says you're a church.
None of this exists apart from Jesus.
So gaze on the goodness of God and allow the depth of your
thankfulness to come out in your actions.
Praise Him, be vocal about your praise, but also bow down before
Him in humility because you don't deserve any of the
goodness that we've received. Now, I know we live in a fairly
individualistic society. We, we more easily see things
that are good for me before we see the things that are good for
we. We, in other words, we more
easily celebrate when something good happens to ourselves or
within our immediate circle of friends.
But because we get caught up in our own world so often,
sometimes we miss the goodness of God in the collective group.
And so from this Psalm, I want to give you 4 reasons that we as
a church family have to celebrate and to be thankful
with all of our hearts. First reason is we celebrate
God's faithful and constant love in verse 2 that that's what
David says. I'll bow down towards your holy
temple and give thanks to your name for your constant love and
truth. You've exalted your name and
your promise above everything else.
David recognizes that God has shown his faithful love over and
over again. And and I know that we talk a
lot about God's love hereforward, but I think
sometimes we talk and even as church family we talk.
Yeah, God loves us. God loves us, but we talk at
high at such a high level we don't know how to pay attention
to where's God showing up and showing his love for us in the
everyday of life. I got I'll be honest with you
and tell you that not everything about this past year has felt
good or simple. There's been a lot of tough
things, a lot of tough things in our church, a lot of tough
things and many of your own personal lives over this past
year. I'll say that for me personally,
this was probably one of the most challenging years that I've
had in ministry for all kinds of reasons.
And I won't go into all the details, but I can tell you this
over and over again, the goodness and faithfulness of God
has shown up to protect this church and carry us through.
God's faithful love has shown up time and time again.
I see the compassion of the Lord so often in the course of a year
in this church. We had 10 people who passed away
part as part of our church family this year.
And as I went to each funeral, you know what I saw and I heard
over and over again from family members?
They kept talking about how God was their comfort, how they were
at peace and at rest because they were experiencing the
closeness of God in their grief and their sorrow.
I've heard so many stories of people who have told me about
encountering God's love in our worship services or as they
study the Bible in discipleship groups or in sermons on Sunday.
A lot of times, God's faithful love is expressed through you as
you serve. You are the hands and feet of
Jesus. Every person who's ever served
at a funeral in our church or brought help to a family in
crisis, as you've experienced the goodness of God in your own
life and you've served other people, you're helping them to
experience the goodness of God. I see it in our seniors care
team who visit and care so well for so many people, some of whom
may never be able to come to church again because of their
health. It shows up as you invest in
families in need through organizations like say Families.
It's shown up in our ESL program that we have here in Cambridge.
You know, when ESL first launched, it had really large
numbers. And over the last year, the
numbers have really kind of slowly dwindled and gotten
smaller. But there's been a more
consistent group of people that have been coming to ESL.
And as that group of people came, relationships, deeper
relationships were being formed with the people who are serving
and leading in ESL, and we began to see God working in ways that
we could have never expected. Most of the attendees in ESL
came to Canada with a faith already, but basically nothing
else. They had nowhere to turn for
practical needs to get settled in Canada.
But this team stepped up and served these families in need in
the most practical ways and showed the goodness and kindness
of God to them. This team has used their
knowledge and their circles of influence to provide practical
assistance and to see lives change for the better.
They've lived out the command in the book of Deuteronomy to love
the resident alien amongst us. It's beautiful you as you serve.
You are expressing the goodness and the constant and faithful
love of God to others. We experience God's faithful
love in our church as He consistently kept His promises
towards us this year. God has provided for all of our
needs as a church family. You know there is a sense of God
math that doesn't always make sense.
As you know this year we started 2 brand new church sites.
We sent out about 100 people from Cambridge to help start the
Branton Arabic sites. And you would think that would
result in a drop in giving in Cambridge, but actually the
opposite happened. Somehow God gave an increase in
giving in Cambridge. See, God keeps providing for our
needs as a church family, showing his faithful love over
and over again. God has been so good to us, but
it doesn't end there. We also celebrate what he's done
in answering our prayers. Look at verse 3.
David says, on the day I called, you answered me.
You increased strength within me.
He's recognizing that God is the God who answers prayer.
God has done the same for many of you over this year.
I I know so many of you have experienced God's answer to
prayers in your own personal life.
And it's so important when you experience God answering prayers
that you don't just move on. It's important you stop and say
thank you to God. If you're going to ask Him to
show His goodness and His power in a situation, it's essential
that you stop and say thank you God, for showing up and for
answering this prayer. Andrew Murray described answered
prayers this way. He said answered prayer is the
interchange of love between the Father and his child.
You know, I think about all the ways that we pray together as a
church family. I think about our prayer and
worship nights that we have together, this powerful moment
when we come together to pray for each other and for the needs
of our church community. I I think about the prayers that
happen in discipleship groups or when your ministry teams that
you're serving and come together and you pray within friendships,
watching people after church services, just standing around
in circles and praying for each other as you've experienced
different things. Every Sunday morning our elders
meet at 8:00 AM to pray for you as a church family.
Over 400 people receive our weekly prayer e-mail and pray
for different requests in our family.
And every year there are hundreds and hundreds of prayer
requests that get brought to us as a church.
And over and over again we see God answering those prayers.
Just this week, a family who had asked us to pray that God would
sustain their business through the spring reported back how God
has answered that prayer and then some.
So many of you, I look out in this room and as a pastor, I
know so many of your stories of things that you were desperately
asking God to show up in situations.
I know so many of your stories where there were health
concerns, financial concerns, and relationship concerns.
I know that some of you, if we would have had this conversation
three months and six months ago, you might have said, I don't
even know if I'm going to make it to be alive on Celebration
Sunday. And here you are.
I look out and I just see the goodness of God in answering
prayers over and over and over again.
When you prayed for our Brant and Arabic congregations to
start, God has answered those prayers and we're seeing people
coming together and forming congregations and it's beautiful
and it's powerful to see what God's doing.
You know, one of the things that we pray for as pastors all the
time is that we would be a church who keeps growing to be
more and more like Jesus. And we can see the ways that
God's answering those prayers. Over 1800 people are connected
somewhere in our discipleship ministries in the life of this
church. There's a hunger and a desire
for people who want to become more like Jesus.
We have almost 500 people who serve on a team somewhere in the
life of our church. Like the fact that you are
willing to give of your time to serve Jesus and to serve others
and love others in that way is a beautiful picture.
One of the things that our elders pray for all the time is
unity. And I am so deeply grateful to
be part of a church family where we can agree to disagree on some
things, but we can still be in unity with each other.
Like there is a difference between unity and uniformity.
We'll never be in uniformity because we're all different.
We all different ideas and thoughts and backgrounds and
expertise and everything else. We'll never be in uniformity,
but we can always be in unity because we have one thing in
common and it's Jesus. It's his love for us and it's
His mission that He's called us to.
When I think about all the ways that God has answered prayers
for our church family over this past year, I cannot help but
look to the Lord and just say thank you, God, Thank you for
your faithfulness to us. Thank you for showing your power
over and over and over again. Thank you for hearing our
prayers and answering when we've called out to you.
But His goodness doesn't end there.
We also celebrate His grace. The verse 4.
All the kings on earth will give you thanks, Lord.
When they hear what you've promised, they will sing the
Lord's ways, for the Lord's glory is great.
Though the Lord is exalted, He takes note of the humble, but he
knows the haughty from a distance.
In these verses, David talks about how even the mighty are
going to recognize their limits when they encounter the glory of
God. The the eternal God, the all
powerful, all knowing Creator of everything.
The one who put the oceans and the mountains in place.
The one who is capable of just simply saying a word and
speaking something into existence.
The one who judges anything that falls short of his standard.
Who is wholly imperfect in every way.
The one who is greater than your mind can possibly fathom, whose
ways and thoughts are so far beyond what you can imagine.
And frankly, his ways and thoughts are so far beyond what
AI will ever be able to come up with that God loves you that
that God sees the brokenness of the world, the brokenness in
your life, in my life, the sin and the shame that we carry.
And instead of running away, that God comes to rescue you.
And not only does he come to rescue you, he comes to keep
walking with you and to be with you every moment of every day
for the rest of your life. He's a God who does not need you
in any way. But the evidence says he does
want you to know him and to know his love for you.
That's grace. That's the unmerited favor of
God. And Psalm 138 tells us in the
verses we just read that the Lord is exalted.
He takes note of the humble. Over this past year, we've seen
people encounter God's grace over and over and over again.
We have seen people of all ages, kids and youth and adults in all
of our sites who've come to know and believe in the goodness of
God and have come to faith in Jesus.
That's God's grace showing up over and over again.
We've seen 49 people baptized in the past year between all of our
sites, and today that number is going higher.
We have a bunch of people who are going to get baptized today
in the service. We've got at least 8 and there
are some of you who are going to get baptized today and you
didn't even know you were going to get baptized today.
Because what we're going to do is we're going to open up the
baptism to anyone who is a believer and follower of Jesus
to be able to say today is the day where I'm going to go public
and I'm going to say Jesus is my Lord.
I'm going to live in obedience to him.
Today is your opportunity for you to be baptized, even if you
weren't planning to be baptized. We do this because we've
encountered God's grace in our lives.
You see, baptism is just an act of obedience.
It's what Jesus has commanded us to do as an outward sign to show
what is already true in our hearts, that we have experienced
His grace and put our faith in Him for the forgiveness of our
sins and the salvation of our lives.
And if you're a believer and follower of Jesus today and
you've never been baptized, I want to say today is your day.
And you're thinking, well, but do I just wear the clothes I
got? We got you.
We got clothes for you. We got towels for you.
We are taking away all your reasons to get back to not get
baptized today. All right.
But grace is not something that just ends when we come to faith.
Aren't you so glad that grace doesn't just end when we come to
faith? We need the grace of God every
single day in our lives. You know, a few months ago, I
had two different people come up to me and say this about forward
within like a week of each other.
It was really crazy. They said, I cannot believe how
open and transparent people are in this church about the
challenges that they're facing in life and about the sins that
they have. And they said this, it's like
this church lives like we know we all have problems.
Indeed, a savior, man, if you're going to be known for one thing,
isn't that a good thing to be known for?
Like we live like we know we all have problems and need a Savior.
That's our story. And can I just tell you that
when I heard that, that's an answer to prayer too?
If you were to walk down the hallway where our staff offices
are, you would actually see a prayer request on the wall that
says this. Pray that.
Shame and secrecy would lose their power in Christians, and
we are seeing the Holy Spirit do that work in our church family,
and I praise God for that. In the video you saw earlier
this morning, you saw stories of people who walked through
Freedom Session, and every story of freedom is a story of God's
grace amongst us. But I'm so glad that we're not a
church that just keeps this good news of grace to ourselves, that
that we're a church that is committed to seeing the people
in our community and all around the world discover the same kind
of grace in every Alpha program, every Youth Alpha in Kitchener,
community outreach events that we've done, community programs
that we run camp forward through our global engagement partners.
And as you interact with people in your everyday life, God is
using this church to help so many other people know that he's
a God of grace. And that's our story we have to
keep telling over and over and over again.
The goodness of God over this past year is everywhere.
But there's still one more thing for us to celebrate, and it's
this. We celebrate the future
victories that He's already won. Look at verse seven and eight.
If I walk into the thick of danger, you will preserve my
life from the anger of my enemies.
You will extend your hand. Your right hand will save me.
The Lord will fulfill His purpose for me.
Lord, your faithful love endures forever.
Do not abandon the work of your hands.
David has this absolute confidence that because God has
been good, he's going to keep being good in the future, no
matter what might come. He says if I walk into the thick
of danger, you will preserve my life.
He says the Lord has a purpose for me, even when it feels like
life is uncertain. And if there's one thing that I
know to be true over the next 12 months, it's this.
I have no idea what's going to happen in the next 12 months,
but here's what I do know. The God who has been good for
the past 12 months is not going to stop being good for the next
12 months. No matter what comes, God is
still good. There are so many more victories
and moments of experiencing His goodness that are waiting for
us. We just need to pay attention
for them. And if you haven't heard one
thing I said today, I want you to hear this.
No matter which site you are a part of.
The best days of Forward Church can still be ahead of us.
Not because we're great, but because His faithful love
endures forever. That's why and that promise and
that hope should never lead us to any sense of arrogance or
entitlement. It actually should move us in
the opposite direction to complete dependence.
It should move us to a place of how David ends this Psalm.
He says he praises the God who is faithful and good, but then
he says, God, please don't abandoned the work.
You've already started a complete dependence on God.
I am confident in the goodness of God, but I also know we are
nothing unless He continues to show His goodness to us as a
church. And So what do we do with that?
Well, for David, there's only one thing you do with the
goodness of God. You praise him and you worship
him. That's what you do.
We fix our eyes on the one who has rescued us from our sins,
who has saved us, and we celebrate his goodness amongst
us. We're going to sing a couple of
songs, one to praise God, one to really reflect and worship God.
And as we're singing these songs today, if you are here today and
you've never been baptized before, but you are a believer
in Jesus, then I want to challenge you as we're singing
these songs, here's what you need to do.
You need to just get up and go out the doors on this side.
If you're up in the balcony, go out the door on this side as
well. And we have some people from our
team who are going to meet with you and help you get ready for
your baptism. Today is your day.
Don't let fear get in the way of you saying yes to Jesus.
If you're here today and you've never put your faith in Jesus
before, man, I can't think of the better moment for you than
right now. He's a God who loves you, who
sent his Son Jesus to die on a cross for your sins in your
place so that you could have the gift of eternal life, that you
could have the gift of calling this godfather.
And what you just need to do is turn to him in faith and say,
Jesus, would you come and forgive me of my sins?
And I place my faith on you. And when you place your faith in
Jesus, God says he gives you the gift of eternal life, not
because of anything you've done, but because of how good he is.
And guess what? If you pray that prayer right
now and say, I want to come to faith in Jesus, you can get
baptized right now too. We'd love to be able to do that.
So as we sing these songs, just get up and lead to the back
doors over on this side and our team will meet with you if you
want to get baptized today. Church, let's stand together.
We have so much to praise the Lord for.
We have so much to worship our God for.
Let's do that over these next couple of songs.
All right, church, let's praise God together and the spirit of
spontaneity. If you want to dance like David
or cry out before the Lord, come up here.