Being Thankful
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Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving
Psalm 103 (NIV)
1 Praise the Lord, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
2 Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits—
3 who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases,
4 who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion,
5 who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
6 The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.
7 He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel:
8 The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.
9 He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever;
10 he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
13 As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
14 for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.
15 The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field;
16 the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.
17 But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children’s children—
18 with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts.
19 The Lord has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all.
20 Praise the Lord, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word.
21 Praise the Lord, all his heavenly hosts, you his servants who do his will.
22 Praise the Lord, all his works everywhere in his dominion. Praise the Lord, my soul.
Oh Praise Him Dave Crowder
It is hard to believe that Thursday is Thanksgiving already. But I as we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving today as a congregation and Thursday with our families. I wanted to take a look at Thanksgiving and what it should mean to us. What has Thanksgiving day come to represent in our culture Turkey! I have heard it called Turkey day but should it be just a day off work to watch football and parades, and eat turkey and pumpkin pie, just a day off to spending time with family and friends? Or should it be more? To answer this question, let’s start with the first Thanksgiving day, well it was actually three days. Now there is some debate about some other celebrations that could have been the first but we are going to focus on the one that most people consider the first Thanksgiving Day. And we are going to begin not with the pilgrims but a native American named Squanto.
As Christians what should we be thankful for?
I want to look at four reasons for us to be thankful. Obviously the list should be a lot longer than four, but I assumed that no one want to sit and listen to me list the 10,000. So we will focus on four this morning.
For the first reason you should be thankful, God created everything.
I didn’t know where else to start but the beginning. Have you ever thanked God for creating the world? I wanted to start with creation to debunk a myth. God does not need us. God did not create us because He was lonely. Why did He create us?
6 I will say to the north, Give up, and to the south, Do not withhold; bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth,
7 everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”
God does need us. He is perfectly self-sufficient. Before creation, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit were in perfect fellowship with each other. They were not lacking anything. They created to world to give Themselves glory.
31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
I want to share a quote from John Piper,
And this is what he communicated in creation to us, to his people. He gave to all who would have it, all who would receive it as their treasure, he gave us a share in the God-displaying, God-glorifying delight that God has in God. And if you press even harder on me and say, “But why? Why did he do this if he was so full and happy without creation?” I would say it’s the nature of the fullness of the divine love to share itself. That’s just what love is like in God. And this sharing is not the completion of God or the improvement of God. Jonathan Edwards, I think, said it most memorably when he said, “It is no argument of the emptiness or deficiency of a fountain that it is inclined to overflow.”
Did you catch Jonathan Edwards quote? The fact that God’s love overflowed into creation. Doesn’t mean that He was empty or deficient. It shows how Our perfect Father’s divine love overflowed to the point of creation. He shared His love by creating us. Let us be thankful that God created the world and us along with it.
2. The second reason I want you to thank God this morning is Noah’s ark.
This may seem strange at first, but stay with me. This summer my family and I had the chance to go visit the Life size Ark that Answers in Genesis built in Kentucky. I would encourage everyone how has the opportunity to go to go. It is huge, but more than just being amazed at the size there is something more impressive about it.
5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
6 And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.
7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.”
8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
This is some of the most piercing verses in the Bible. We can see right into the heart of God. The Lord regretted making man. It grieved Him to His heart. Sin and wickedness grieve the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I find that difficult to process. I often ignore this fact. That my sin grieves the Holy Spirit. But Praise be to God, that in His grace and mercy, He provide Salvation. This leads to our third reason to be thankful Jesus.
3. Jesus
I probably don’t need to say any more If you know Him but incase you don’t know Him yet let’s look at why you should be thankful today, Thursday, and as a matter of fact every day for the rest of your life for the gift of Jesus Christ. We begin by looking at His birth. Listen to Matthew discribe this miraculous event.
18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.
19 And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.
20 But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:
23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).
24 When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife,
25 but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.
Why do people want to discredit the virgin birth? And why is the virgin birth so important? By it Jesus is both 100% God and 100% man. I know we recently talked about how important this is but to recap, Jesus has to be God to save us from our sin right? We need the spotless lamb to die in our place because we have all sinned and fallen short. and the wages of that sin is death.
1 Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?
9 And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.
Like sheep we have gone astray, will you thank God that He sent the Good Shepherd to save you? At some point we all were walking in darkness and what did God do? He sent the Light right? Look at John chapter one with me
4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Will you praise God with me that he sent The Light into the world and into our hearts? We were in darkness, but our loving Father did not let us there, No His love overflowed in the Person and deity of Jesus. This leads to our last reason we are going to look at for being thankful this morning and that is communion. Why should you be thankful this morning for communion?
26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
So what are we celebrating when we take communion? First we are celebrating the Lord’s death. What does that mean? We are celebrating that The Lord redeemed us. He took your sin and He took my sin on Himself and paid the price at the cross for that sin which is? Death. So as we take communion we recognize that Jesus took our place on the cross and satisfied the wrath of God but he also gives us His righteousness. Because remember only the righteous will see God. But there is a second aspect that we are celebrating in communion and this is what makes it a joyous occasion. In communion we are proclaiming the Lord’s death until when? Until He comes, do you see the promise Jesus is making in communion? We are celebrating the promise that He is coming again. So when we celebrate communion we are celebrating the promise that our King is coming. Does our King keeps His promises? YES AND AMEN!
Creation
Noah’s Ark
Jesus
and Communion
Are just a few of the many reasons we have to be thankful today, Thursday, and everyday. But I want to leave you with a thought form Philippians 2
14 Do everything without grumbling or arguing,
if you stop and think about it. If you are grumbling and complaining you are really being ungrateful. You are focusing on the negative and not giving God thanks for the good things in life. I am very guilty of this. I have found myself complaining a lot lately, about people and about my employer and about life in general, but the truth is if you focus on the good in others and thank God for all the blessings that He has given you and as we spoke about earlier, if you focus on the promise that He made in Jesus. No matter how bad others treat us or how bad this life gets, You have a glorious promise that should turn any situation around. Our king is coming again and He promise to make every wrong right. He has promised eternity with Him in never ending love and joy and peace and kindness. No more pain sickness or death. What do you have to complain about. What do I have to complain about? Someone may mistreat us, our boss my be unfair or unkind. What does it matter when you look at your future with Christ our king?