Thank you Lord

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 9:15

2 Corinthians 9:15 NASB95

Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!

Introduction: It is so easy to take things for granted. We live in a wonderful, free country. Most are well fed. Most have shelter and money. We might not be as well off as some, but compared to most of the world we are rich. We are not only blessed materially, we are blessed with friends, family, and a future. In spite of all this, we are sometimes slow to acknowledge our blessings. Because we have grown so accustomed to them, we take them for granted. Occasionally, we need to be reminded of just what we have been taking for granted and what we have to be thankful for. At special times like Thanksgiving, we should focus our attention on the things that really count. This American holiday of Thanksgiving is a special time of the year. It is a time when we look back on the blessings God has given us, and a time when we look forward to the blessings we will enjoy in eternity. Additionally, we can focus in on the present and celebrate the greatest gift of all, the gift of God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

Why Thanksgiving?

What is the basis for true thanksgiving? For someone to be thankful, he or she must be grateful for something and to someone. The early Pilgrims had many difficult days in settling this new land. Governor Bradford of Massachusetts is believed to have made this first Thanksgiving proclamation three years after the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth:

Inasmuch as the Great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forest to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as He has protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience. Now I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and ye little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of nine and twelve in the daytime, on Thursday, November 29th, in the year of our Lord One Thousand Six Hundred and Twenty-Three, and the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings.

Those early Pilgrims recognized that the provisions they had experienced came from God. They were thankful, and they did not hide the fact that they were thankful to Almighty God.

But the greatest gift ever given, by the greatest Person, was God’s Son, Jesus Christ. He’s the real basis for all thanksgiving. Our key text says, “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!” (2 Cor. 9:15). The greatest gift that anyone has ever given to humankind is God’s gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ. God sent Jesus because He loved us and so He could do the greatest work for us that anyone has ever done. That work was dying on the Cross for our sins so that we could be set free. Jesus paid the penalty for all your sins. He died so that you would not have to die. He suffered so that the bondage of sin could be broken. He took your place on the Cross. He died for you. And He did it all because He loves you. God responded to the greatest need, our sins, by giving the greatest Person, Jesus Christ, to make the greatest sacrifice, His death, so He could give us the greatest gift, eternal life. God gave Jesus. Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!

The Benefits.

There are over 550 references to thankfulness in the Bible. With such an emphasis on thanksgiving, there must be great benefits as well. Consider the benefits of cultivating this attitude of gratitude. Perhaps the greatest is that thanksgiving has a powerful effect on our lives. Thanksgiving makes us different. Look around you. Daily you will see people who are bitter. It’s been said that “some people are bitter, not because they do not have anything, but because they do not have everything.” We have been well taught to be greedy and ungrateful. We are bombarded by commercials that remind us of what we do not have. Christmas becomes a depressing time for many. We are led to believe that if we do not have things we will not experience happiness. Most unhappy people are unthankful people. At first glance, you may think them unthankful because they are unhappy. The opposite is true: they are unhappy because they are unthankful.

Thanksgiving has the power to transform us into different people. We will not only be different from the people around us, but we will also be different from the way we used to be. We will be transformed. We will be transformed in our thinking and in our temperament. As we seek to cultivate this attitude of gratitude, our thinking will be transformed. The way of the world is to concentrate on the negative, but the way of Christ is to emphasize the positive. We are to look for the good in everything. Philippians 4:8 tells us, “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.”

Conclusion: Thanksgiving is something unique that we can give to God. When you think of it, all the material things we give to God were given to us by Him, but our thanksgiving is ours—a personal gift and an offering of praise to God. We should learn how to express our thanksgiving well, not only to God, but to one another. We’re sometimes too much like a little boy I heard about. On his return from a birthday party, his mother asked, “Bobby, did you thank the lady for the party?” Bobby replied, “Well, I was going to. But a girl ahead of me said, ‘Thank you,’ and the lady told her not to mention it. So I didn’t.” What kinds of attitudes characterize you? You can either take things for granted or take them with gratitude. Let’s remember to “give thanks with a grateful heart.” And let’s remember Paul’s prayer, “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!”

Exported from Logos Bible Software, 9:33 AM November 16, 2023.