A Heart of Thanksgiving

There are some mornings that I wake up and I feel joyful. My mind is immediately focused on the Lord, and I have scripture running through my head, and a song in my heart. I usually spend those mornings in long sessions of prayer and listening to music while accomplishing small chores. Those are the best mornings. My walk with God is easy and it sets the pace for the rest of my day. My heart is filled with thankfulness, and my songs and prayers filled with Thanksgiving.

But then there are those mornings when I wake up, and I am wrestling with my flesh. I’m not focused on Christ, I’m worried about finances or thinking about selfish wants. I know that a heart of thanksgiving would be good, but it seems like the furthest thing possible at that moment. It would be an uphill battle to achieve that morning. Some days I make that fight to wrestle myself into a place where I can be thankful, but other times I let myself be consumed by worries, by passions, by the flesh.

And maybe you can relate to these mornings as well: the good and the bad.

My question is, “How, even on these challenging mornings, can you obtain a heart of Thanksgiving?” “How can we obtain a thankful heart?”

Fortunately God’s word helps guide us and instruct us. And I found Psalm 100 to be particularly helpful when addressing this question. So please read along with me, Psalm 100.

Psalm 100

Psalm 100:1 ESV

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!

Psalm 100:2 ESV

Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing!

Psalm 100:3 ESV

Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Psalm 100:4 ESV

Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name!

Psalm 100:5 ESV

For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.

Let us pray. (pray)

Before we jump into the meaning of the text, I want to help you see the form of the text.

This Psalm is a chiasm, which means the important point is in the middle.

Just as our English language may have something like this used in its literary style, where you have the introduction, a build up to the climax of the story, a downward falling action, and then a conclusion … you see that the point is in the middle … so also Hebrew has a form of writing where it’s almost like you could fold the whole poem in half and get the same thing, except the climax, the important point, is in the middle. I went ahead and diagrammed this for us. As you can see, ...

Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth

Serve the Lord with gladness!

Come into his presence with thanksgiving

Know that the Lord, he is God!

It is He who has made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of His pasture

Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise!

Give thanks to him; bless his name!

For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.

The Psalms are not only words for us to live by, but are also beautiful in their literary form. And knowing that form helps us to understand which part is being emphasized the most.

So, because there are four parallel parts to this Psalm, I have four points for us this morning:

A thankful heart fears the Lord (3)

A thankful heart comes to God (2b, 4a)

A thankful heart responds in praise (2a, 4b)

A thankful heart remembers the Lord’s goodness (1, 5)

1. A Thankful Heart Fears the Lord

Psalm 100:3 ESV

Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

The Lord is central to this poem. Lord, God, he, his are repeated 16 times in a matter of these five verses. God is the center of the focus and worship here. The line that reads “Know that the LORD, He is God” makes you think to who God is … that he is the LORD, the great I am, the one who IS. Think back to the burning bush when the Lord spoke to Moses and proclaimed the holy ground which Moses tread, who spoke to Moses through a burning bush. The LORD is the one who reigned down terrors upon Egypt because they thought that their gods actually did something. But the LORD is the one with the power over the heavens and the earth. While the Egyptians tried to conjure frogs and flies and to summon darkness, The LORD is the one who did all of those things, and then some. Remember that the LORD is God. And he still is to our day. While all the other gods or ways of belief in this world are ultimately nothing, the LORD is the one who created the world. It is he who formed heavens and the earth. It is he who has the power to protect and to save, to change a sinner’s heart. While all of the other belief systems in this world appeal to rocks or to sticks and stones or to a demon for their salvation, our God is the one who is high above it all. He is the living God, the all-powerful God, the all-knowing God, the eternal God. Believer, you know this and have it written on your heart. The LORD, HE is God.

And who are we before his presence? It is this LORD who we are to fear: to have a reverence for because of his great power and authority.

Nothing. We cannot claim deity for ourselves: we did not create the world, we do not know all the answers, we are not perfect in every way. But God is.

Fear of the Lord is knowing who God is and who we are compared to him.

And the LORD, in his might and splendor and majesty … made us. (change tone)

He made us. And we are his. a people for his own possession. We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

God knows you and cares for you. You are a living, breathing, creature with a soul made after the image of God, you are someone who God has placed his image upon to reflect his goodness and his beauty and his wisdom.

We know that because of sin that image of God placed in every man has become marred, corroded, covered up. But the almighty God humbled himself to become a man, I’m talking about Jesus Christ, so that he might live the life you were meant to live, and to die the death you were meant to have. And in his great sacrifice on the cross, when he took your pains and your sin upon himself and he endured the wrath of God that was stored up for you and when he gave you his own righteous robe, he called you to be his own. Someone whose image of God has been restored, who can now live as the person the LORD has created you to be. A person who knows to fear the LORD, instead of living life their own way.

Through Jesus Christ we are able to fear the LORD. We recognize who God is and how we fail to meet his perfect standard. But by grace God has granted you access to him through the Son. And now you are a part of his pasture. He will never let you go. You are the sheep of his pasture. Who can snatch you out of the Father’s hand? No one. No one.

The Lord loves you. He has done what no other god or system of belief can do, by reaching into your life and changing your heart of stone into a heart of flesh, and making you spiritually alive.

Let us be thankful to him.

Rather than a heart of selfishness and self-focus, thinking we could do life our own way, we now have a heart that has been broken and made new: made to see God’s love and his intentions for us: that we may display his goodness and kindness toward others and that we may know him as LORD and love him.

For the Christian, this is the heart of Thanksgiving. It is the heart of genuine response in praise and worship to what God has done in displaying his great love toward you.

Thankfulness, praise.

And so a thankful heart fears the Lord. Then the thankful heart comes to God. It comes before his very presence.

2. A Thankful Heart Comes to God

Psalm 100:2 (ESV)

Come into his presence with singing!

Psalm 100:4 (ESV)

Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise!

When we come before the Lord, we should sing to him and exalt his name. The invitation for us is now there: come to his presence, enter his gates.

Often we don’t realize the importance of this invitation. We don’t think about the depth of sin and the deep divide that it has caused between sinful man and the holy God. It is a chasm too deep and too wide for us to cross on our own. It’s a divide that only perfection could heal.

But Jesus crossed it. He made a way for you to cross that divide. Because Jesus died upon the cross a sinner like you can now enter the holy presence of God. You now have access to the Father. Take advantage of that in order to express your gratitude to him. You now have a direct hotline to the holy and living God. You once were far off but now you have been brought near. You once lived out in the cold and rain but now you have been brought into God’s house and have been warmed by the fire. You once were separated from God because of your sin (and as we all know God’s holy presence does not dwell with sin), but now his Spirit lives within you and you are able to come before him and to know who he is and to enjoy his goodness and his person. You are the lost son or daughter who wandered away from your father and home, squandering your inheritance to the point of utter shame, but HE has welcomed you back home into his presence and clothed you and honored you. (pause) You don’t deserve to be in God’s presence, but he has welcomed you in because he loves you.

So give thanks to him. Sing praise to him! Exalt his name! Tell of his wonders and mercies. What can you do to repay him that would mean anything compared to what he has sacrificed for you?

Well, a thankful heart not only fears the LORD and comes to him, but a thankful heart also responds in praise. Responds in praise.

3. A Thankful Heart Responds in Praise

Psalm 100:2 (ESV)

Serve the Lord with gladness!

Psalm 100:4 (ESV)

Give thanks to him; bless his name!

Serve the LORD. You see what the Lord has done for you? How he has paid everything, taken every guilt and shame upon himself for your sake? Good! Now follow his example. He gave up everything out of love for you. Would it not be expected that you do the same for him?

Romans 12:1 ESV

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Your whole self should respond in praise to the wonders that God has done. Is not the call to us as humans to love the Lord with all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our mind, and all of our strength?? Is it not all of that which God has redeemed of us, that we may have it? We lived in sin. We were squandering the desires of our heart. Our soul was not alive. Our mind was set on finding ways to commit more evil, to secure our own sins and passions, and our strength was wasted on things that are not good, that do not benefit others. But God, because he has given you a new heart, now makes you see the depths of his sacrifice for you. He helps you see where your heart and soul and mind and strength are meant to be all along- living in worship of the one who made you. A thankful heart, one who has received Jesus, responds in praise.

A heart that has received such a deep and meaningful gift can only turn around and offer the entirety of itself.

We see this in our world. Think of persons in our society who have been saved because someone else gave up their own life to save another.

I think of people who have received organs because of someone else. When I was in college, one of my closest friends passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. He was rock climbing with a few of my other friends and both of his safety straps broke. It was a freak accident. He fell, and he never got back up. By the time the paramedics got there he had already breathed his last. His body was still warm but his life was gone. The first-responders checked his driver’s license and saw that he was an organ donor, and harvested his organs.

I remember being there at the funeral, thinking about what was in that box, how there was hardly anything of my friend left. We didn’t bury much of my friend because he had given so much of himself away. Most of his body was gone. But now six others have life because of the organs that he gave. And those six people will never forget the person who chose to give of himself for their sake. And I bet you they are living life to the best they can right now out of gratitude for him.

God has given everything for you. He has given you his own heart so that yours may beat again. He has given you new organs so that you can live in body, mind, soul, strength. Should we not respond in gratitude and thankfulness to him? Should we not live the best life that we can in memory of him? Each and every one of our lives should have written upon it “in loving memory of Jesus Christ, our LORD”. A memory that gives praise to Jesus. Not just in his sacrifice to give you new life, but also that he himself is alive. Tell others about what God has done for you. Tell God thanks for what he has given you. Is new life and a new heart something to be taken so lightly that you do not even think to give God praise?

(Pause)

So thank him.

A thankful heart fears the Lord, a thankful heart comes to God. A thankful heart responds in praise. And a thankful heart remembers the LORD’s goodness.

4. A Thankful Heart Remembers the Lord’s Goodness

Psalm 100:1 ESV

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!

Psalm 100:5 ESV

For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.

God’s goodness, his grace offered through Jesus Christ, is for all peoples everywhere. Jesus died to save people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. His offer of grace and redemption has saved many in the past, many in the present, and hopefully many more in the future. God’s goodness extends outward. It is a love that is beyond just ourselves.

While my friend’s organs went to save just a few who were in desperate need, Jesus’ body is sufficient for all. There are many many people who have been saved because of him. And so we think upon God’s goodness toward us corporately, not looking just to the present but also to the past.

When George Washington declared a day of thanksgiving in 1789, he acknowledged the Lord’s sovereignty over all. The day of Thanksgiving was to be issued that the people may (and I quote) “unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great LORD and Ruler of nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions” (end quote). The founder of our nation knew and acknowledged the Lord’s role in establishing this nation, in maintaining its prosperity, in the groundwork to everything that is done. He knew that we have transgressions which we need to repent from. He knew that we need the LORD and his salvation.

Likewise, in Abraham Lincoln’s address to the nation when establishing Thanksgiving as a national holiday, proclaimed “I invite the people of the United States to assemble on that occasion in their customary places of worship, and, in the forms approved by their own consciences, render the homage due to the Divine Majesty for the wonderful things He has done in the nation’s behalf”

The Lord God is faithful to all peoples over the whole earth. He is the one who makes the sun to rise on the just and on the unjust. He is the one who has guided the course of human history, and caused nations to stand where they stand, and fall where they fall. Thanksgiving is not just a time for uniting with family and giving thanks for what we have in the present, but it’s also looking to the past and remembering the Lord’s goodness to many.

This is the Lord we serve. We know he will be faithful to us now because of his faithfulness to those of the past. We know there are many blessings for us now because of his character of steadfast love.

The Lord wants us to have a Thankful Heart.

What is preventing you from living with a thankful heart?

What is preventing you from living with a Thankful Heart?

Maybe it’s difficult to give praise to the Lord because of your current station in life. Not a lot of things are going your way. You wake up to a bitter reality, of the failing health of those around you, of your own weak ability. Of the rising cost of utilities and groceries and gas prices. It seems that the state of the world is dim and that because of that you do not want to offer praise to the Lord.

Well, let me tell you that no heart of sorrow or bitterness is an excuse to not give praise to the Lord. Is his sacrifice not more than this life? Did he not say that the time in which we live is but a moment, that just as the grass comes to life and feels the scorch of the sun for a season and then fades, so are our lives here on this earth? There is an eternal light and warmth to come. What the Lord has given us in the security of our souls reaches beyond our present sufferings. Believer, even in the midst of trials and sufferings there is Thanksgiving to be had. It may seem impossible, but take time to reflect upon what God has done for you. Let his light lead you out of the darkness in which you now dwell. The Christian has the amazing ability to be thankful, even in the midst of suffering. Tap into that faith which God has given you, and praise the Lord even in the midst of the darkness. (pause)

What is preventing you from living with a Thankful heart?

Well, maybe it’s your own sense of self-righteousness? Also known as pride. To many in this nation, thanksgiving is looking around at what you have, then looking at what others have, and saying to yourself “I have it better off than them, so I’m thankful.” Let me warn you now, this is a false sense of thanksgiving. Do you remember the parable Jesus told about the two men who were worshipping at the temple: one was a Pharisee and the other a tax collector and sinner? The self-righteous Pharisee said to God, “Lord, I am thankful that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers or even like this tax collector.” while the tax collector beat his chest with his hand and fell face-first before the Lord saying “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”. Thinking we have more, thinking that we are better off than others, does not reflect a heart of thanksgiving. It’s reflective of a heart of pride. Humble yourself and recognize God’s gift of life for all people and his graces toward the whole earth. Everyone on earth has something to be thankful for because God gives common graces: life, breath, the sun, food, shelter. Let us rejoice in the things God has given us rather than comparing ourselves to those who seemingly have less.

What is preventing you from living with a Thankful heart?

Maybe it’s because you don’t yet know Jesus as your Lord and savior. Without unification with God and peace within yourself and toward others and ultimately you are dissatisfied. Let me say this to you: A heart that is focused on itself is not a thankful heart. I would invite you to ask God for a new heart. One that takes the focus off of yourself and onto the God who loves you and who gave his life to save you. If that interests you, please talk with me or pastor Marcus or one of our other members after the service. There is much to be thankful to God for, and we would love to share with you what Christ has done for us and what he can do for you so that you too can live a life of thanksgiving.

(pause)

Conclusion:

The Lord wants us to have a thankful heart.

We can have a thankful heart when we fear the Lord- when we recognize who he is and who we are, and who he has made us to be in respect to him; When we come to him and enter his presence because of the work of Jesus Christ; When we respond in praise to the Lord because of the works of Jesus; and when we remember and think upon God’s faithful kindness toward us.