Sermon Tone Analysis

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

So what are we celebrating when we take communion?