Thanksgiving Sermon

Thanksgiving

Good Morning and welcome to Sunday School. When I asked God what He would have me teach this morning, the verse, “O, Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His mercy endures forever” bubbled up in me.

So I looked up the verse. It actually appears 9 times: once in 1 Chronicles, and 8 times in Psalms. Then I looked at these passages, trying to figure out how we were going to study them.

But I was missing the big picture. God wasn’t telling me what to study, He was telling me what to do. “O Give thanks to the Lord for He is good” and “O Give thanks to the Lord for His mercy endures forever.” When I did, I found myself saying “praise God.” And a little while later, “I worship, you.” But that’s not what God told me to do. He said, “Give thanks to the Lord.”

You see, we Christians use the words “thanksgiving”, “praise”, and “worship” interchangeably. But, there are differences. Thanksgiving is different from praise which is different from worship.

·       Thanksgiving relates to God's deeds, what He has done.

·       Praise relates to God's character, who He is.

·       Wor­ship relates directly to God's holiness.

This morning, I want to talk about the meaning and purpose of thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is a New Testament term. Giving thanks comes from the heart. It is a personal matter. Our hearts are filled with gratitude.

Praise on the other hand is an Old Testament term. You may remember a study we did a while back where we looked at the Hebrew words for praise. They ranged from raising your hands, to playing music, to shouting. All of the Hebrew terms in the Old Testament for praise are public actions.

Thanksgiving may be silent and private, but praise is vocal and public. Thanksgiving occurs when we breathe a prayer of thanks to God. Praise occurs when we thank God publicly, telling others of what He's done for us.

I’m going to shock you now. There is no word meaning "thank you" in Hebrew. In Old Testament times they used the word “praise” in place of "thanks". The word todah  translated as "thanks" in the Old Testament is closely connected to the word for "hand." The Hebrew concept of giving thanks is stretching out or lifting up of the hand to God.

In New Testament, the word for "thanks" is the charis. This is where we get the term "char­ismatic". Translated literally, charis means "grace." In other words, thanksgiving is our response to God's grace. Thanksgiving is something we are supposed to do.

Turn with me to 1 Thessalonians 5:16-19:

16 Be joyful always; 17 pray continually; 18 give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

“Give thanks in all circumstances”? Let’s get the hard questions out of the way first. Are we supposed to give thanks when someone is killed? Or when someone dies of cancer? Well, at face value it looks that way. Some people do believe that everything that happens, good or bad, comes from God. If that is true, then I am supposed to thank God when someone I know dies and goes to hell?     Of course not!

Zip over to 1 John 3:8b

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.

If Jesus came to destroy the works of the Devil, then the Devil has  obviously been working.

How does he work?

John 10:10:

10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly." The works of the Devil are stealing, kill­ing, and destroying.

The Bible does not command us to thank God for the Devil's work. Rather the Bible encourages to thank God for what God has done. We need to stop blaming God for the things that the Devil has been doing.

Back to 1 Thessalonians 5:18 we read,                         

"In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you."

Notice that the word is "in." It’s not "for." We are not  to give thanks for everything that happens, we are to give thanks in the midst of whatever is happening.

We give thanks in the midst of sickness by saying,

·       "by his stripes we are healed" (1 Peter 2:24).

·       I give thanks that Jesus took my infirmities, and bare my sick­nesses (Matthew 8:17).

·       I give thanks the He is the God that heals me. (Exo­dus 15:26)

·       we give thanks for God's answer to Sa­tan's attacks

·       we give thanks for the Word of God.

We don't give thanks for the things that have us bound; we give thanks that we don't have to remain bound.

It is the Word of God that sets us free!

Thanksgiving sets the tone, it gets our faith moving, it prepares us and opens the door for miracles.

18 give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

It’s not only the first part of this verse that people misinterpret. Many people attribute everything that happens in their lives to God and they regard it as God's will for them.  That’s not what Paul is saying.

Turn with me to Ephesians 5:17-20

17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. 18 Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. 19 Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, 20 always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ..

In other words, Paul is saying pay attention, this is what the  will of God is: (v. 18) to be filled with the Spirit

How do we fulfill the will of God? (v. 19) by speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

What happens when you are filled with the Spirit? (20) you give thanks to God

We’ve spoken quite a bit recently about what comes out of your mouth. We’ve talked about people who are always complaining and don’t have a good thing to say. I believe this passage is telling us that if we’re not giving thanks, we are not only out of God's will, but we are also not filled with the Holy Spirit.

I’m not saying that you don’t know God; I’m saying that you are not producing fruit.  And you cannot produce fruit without the Holy Spirit. We know that we can quench the Spirit. Matthew 12:34b says, "for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." We know that our words have power. It is our responsibility as believers to speak the Word of faith, to give the Holy Spirit permission and room to move in our lives if we are to fulfill God’s plans for our lives. If we do that, if our hearts are filled with the Holy Spirit, thanksgiving will come out of our mouths.

So just how important is Thanksgiving? Turn with me to Psalm 100:4-5

4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.

In order to get into the throne room we need thanksgiving. It gets us through the gate. Look at vs. 5, why we should thank the Lord?

5 For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.

Turn over to Philippians 4:6-7,

The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Notice there is a relationship between supplication and thanksgiving. Supplication means to make a prayer request. We are used to regularly bringing our requests to the Lord, asking Him to meet our various needs. Paul makes it clear that before we present our requests to the Lord, we need to give thanks.

Why? Thanksgiving prepares our heart for faith. When we thank God for what he’s done in the past, we connect with the Spirit that says if He’s done it before, He can do it again.

Thanksgiving helps us not to focus on the problem, but on the answer.

Paul always thanked God first before he interceded for the people who were receiving his letter.

·       Romans 1:8 "First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all";

·       Ephesians 1:15 he writes, "I cease not to give thanks for you";

·       Philip­pians 1:3, "I thank my God upon every remembrance of you";

·       Colossians 1:3, "We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you";

·       1 Thessalonians 1:2, "We give thanks to God al­ways for you all";

·       2 Timothy 1:3, "thank God."

What about Jesus?  When Jesus fed the 5000, he took the loaves, and after giving thanks, He gave the food to the disciples to give to the people. He did not pray. He just gave thanks to the Father. His thanksgiving led to a miracle that provided food enough to feed at least five thousand people.

Sidebar: Jesus did not perform this miracle as the Son of God. When he walked on this earth he was fully human.  In Acts 10:38, we read how God anointed Jesus with the Holy Ghost and with power. It was the Holy Spirit working through Jesus that performed this miracle. Thanksgiving opened the door for the miracle.

Flip over to John 11. Lazarus is dead. We know Jesus took his time getting to Bethany. We also know that his dear friend Martha had blasted him for not getting there sooner.

Starting with v.28

38 Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. 39 “Take away the stone,” he said. “But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”  40 Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” 41 So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 

Notice the verb is past tense. Jesus had prayed before he went to Bethany. He probably prayed as soon as he heard Lazarus was sick. But here in front of all the mourners, He simply gave thanks. His thanksgiving was the trigger for a miracle. Lazarus rose from the dead when Jesus gave thanks.

Let’s look at another thanksgiving miracle.

Luke 17:11-19

11 Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance 13 and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” 14 When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed. 15 One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. 16 He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan. 17 Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? 18 Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19 Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you whole.”

The phrase " your faith has made you whole” is significant. In Greek the word is sozo which means to save. What Jesus is saying to the man is that his soul has been saved by his giving thanks to Je­sus. So you see there is a blessing associated with giving thanks to God.

Consider this, most of us did not learn to pray in church or in school. Neither was the 1st prayer we learned “now I lay me down to sleep”. The truth is; we’ve done more praying around the kitchen table than anywhere else on earth. From our earliest years we knew: if you don’t pray, you don’t eat; a meal is incomplete without it. And yet, how many people today continue to thank God each time they eat?

Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that if the constellations appeared only once in a thousand years, imagine what an exciting event it would be. But because they’re there every night, we barely give them a look.

You tell me, who is more grateful?

·       A hungry homeless man or a rich man out on the town for the evening?

·       A lonely woman in a nursing home when she receives a visitor or a popular woman at a party?

·       A Russian who finally gets his own copy of the Bible after seventy-five years of state-imposed atheism or all of us who own shelves full of Christian books and magazines?

Let’s not take God for granted. Let’s tap into the Holy Spirit and put on an attitude of gratitude. We sing that song, Everywhere I Go, I See You on a regular basis. Let me encourage you to do more than just look for God’s hand. “O Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His mercy endures forever”.