Giving Thanks for God's Goodness
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Introduction
Introduction
It’s hard to believe that we are celebrating our second Thanksgiving since the beginning of the pandemic. I’m sure that we are all grateful that this year, we will be able to spend time with our families and friends and celebrate the holidays without having to worry too about the spread of Covid. Despite all the uncertainties of life and what the future holds for us, there is still so much to be thankful for. And as we get ready to begin the Thanksgiving week, I wanted to focus our hearts on giving thanks to the Lord for all of His goodness.
Praise the Lord!
Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever!
Who can utter the mighty deeds of the Lord,
or declare all his praise?
Blessed are they who observe justice,
who do righteousness at all times!
Remember me, O Lord, when you show favor to your people;
help me when you save them,
that I may look upon the prosperity of your chosen ones,
that I may rejoice in the gladness of your nation,
that I may glory with your inheritance.
Both we and our fathers have sinned;
we have committed iniquity; we have done wickedness.
Nevertheless, he looked upon their distress,
when he heard their cry.
For their sake he remembered his covenant,
and relented according to the abundance of his steadfast love.
He caused them to be pitied
by all those who held them captive.
Save us, O Lord our God,
and gather us from among the nations,
that we may give thanks to your holy name
and glory in your praise.
Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,
from everlasting to everlasting!
And let all the people say, “Amen!”
Praise the Lord!
For the sake of time, we just read the beginning and the end of Psalm 106 which is actually a much longer chapter. But as you can tell by the opening and the closing, the main purpose of this particular psalm is to teach God’s people how to give Him praise. And in particular this Psalm gives us the two major reasons why our praises should be filled with thanksgiving. The first reason is the goodness of God and the second is the steadfast love of God.
One of the best definitions of gratitude that I have read is that it is a type of joy that arises in our hearts in response to the goodness of someone who has shown us favor. Gratitude by its very definition is something inherently linked to joy. Let me illustrate what I mean by this. I think we have all experienced that awkward moment when we have opened up a gift and it’s something that you absolutely don’t like and you’re trying pretend that you’re thankful but it’s impossible, why? Well, because there is no sense of joy in your heart. If you have never experienced this and you want to, buy your wife a vacuum cleaner for your anniversary and you’ll probably see gratitude and joy leave your marriage. Gratitude is a joyful response to someone being good to you. But what’s interesting about gratitude is the fact that it is not only an emotion but it’s also a type of virtue. In fact, some have made sweeping claims that gratitude is the father of all virtues, which makes some sense.
Grateful people tend to be more giving, more prone to responding out of kindness, better able to extend mercy and grace. And as such, gratitude is something that mirrors the heart of God. Now we rarely think of gratitude as something that describes the nature of who Jesus is becasue in the end, who does He need to give thanks to. As we read in Colossians, all things were created through him and for him and in him all things hold together. But despite the fact that everything in creation owes its existence to him, we see Jesus giving thanks repeatedly in the Scriptures.
And directing the crowd to sit down on the ground, he took the seven loaves and the fish, and having given thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.
So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me.
Gratitude as a virtue that describes God is only made possible by the fact that this one God exists as three persons. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity not only insures that God is eternally loving but also eternally grateful. But the most remarkable expression of gratitude is found in the gospel of Luke.
And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
As Jesus is preparing this symbol of his own death and suffering on the cross for the sin of mankind, He still has the capacity to give thanks for the good that will come out of this unthinkable evil. That’s simply astounding and followers of Christ for ages have learned the secret of gratitude from their Savior.
We know that the first Thanksgiving celebrations in America took place after the pilgrims survived some of the most difficult living conditions. The colony at Plymouth had lost over half of their familhy and friend in the year prior to celebrating their first Thanksgiving. The very first Thanksgiving that took place in Virginia wasn’t even a feast. The winter of 1610 at Jamestown had reduced a group of 409 settlers to 60. Yet they continued to pray and when help arrived, in the form of a ship filled with food and supplies from England, a prayer meeting was held to give thanks to God.
It’s clear that these first settlers practiced what the Scriptures teach us which is to be thankful in all circumstances. This is a principle that even modern psychologists agree is the key to happiness but it’s something that is virtually impossible to follow unless you believe in the essential goodness of God and that He is guiding your life like a shepherd cares for his sheep. After all how can you possibly give thanks when it feels like life is falling apart all around you? How can you give thanks in those difficult moments? Ultimately it is a matter of perspective and the unwavering belief that God works all things for the good of those who love him.
Perspective is always something to be mindful of. I once heard a pastor ask his congregation whether they have ever been thankful for a sink full of dirty dishes before washing them. He went on to say that even this can be a source of gratitude because it means you have eaten well that day, something that millions of people can’t say along with you. If you could color your day with those types of shifts in perspective, I think we would all be more grateful and joyful.
But more important than just changes in our perspective is the change in the very orientation of our hearts. One of the most important lessons that I have learned about gratitude is that is it not primarily a response to the goodness of life but it is a response to the essential goodness of God. This is what allows us to be thankful for every situation and every circumstance. Life constantly changes but God’s goodness always remains the constant.
Now if we freely admit that gratitude is a virtue than the opposite of that should also be true. Meaning that ingratitude is a vice. I think we would all agree to this statement. Who among us has never been angry when you felt like someone was ungrateful for your act of kindness or favor that you showed? Why do we get angry towards ingratitude? The short answer is because we feel sinned against. In the same way, ingratitude towards God is a moral wrong becasue who is more worthy of our gratitude than the one who created us, gave us life, provides for our everyday existence, and ultimately offers us salvation from our sin.
In the middle portion of Psalm 106, the part that we didn’t read, we see a long list of sins that the people of God commit out of their ingratitude.
Insatiable desire for the unneccessary
But they soon forgot his works;
they did not wait for his counsel.
But they had a wanton craving in the wilderness,
and put God to the test in the desert;
2. Jealousy and coveting of others
When men in the camp were jealous of Moses
and Aaron, the holy one of the Lord,
the earth opened and swallowed up Dathan,
and covered the company of Abiram.
3. Forgetting God and the ensuing idolatry.
They made a calf in Horeb
and worshiped a metal image.
They exchanged the glory of God
for the image of an ox that eats grass.
They forgot God, their Savior,
who had done great things in Egypt,
These categories of sin can be best described as having the wrong relationship with things, with others, and with God. But this whole cascade of sin begins with one main vice and that is the fact that we tend not to remember the abundance of God’s steadfast love.
Our fathers, when they were in Egypt,
did not consider your wondrous works;
they did not remember the abundance of your steadfast love,
but rebelled by the sea, at the Red Sea.
Sometimes having too much of a good thing makes us not only forgetful but also ungrateful. That is the interesting thing about our fallen human nature, the more we have of something, the more we take it for granted. (Try giving your children everything they want, and see how grateful they are at the end of the day.) And I’m not saying that God spoils us with His love but at the same time, God’s love for us is so abundant and plentiful that it is easy for us to dismiss. Day by the day, we are constantly swimming in the ocean of God’s steadfast love and unless we constantly remind ourselves to be thankful for his love, we can easily forget. So much of our sin and discontentment and complaining comes from that place of forgetfulness.
But here is the amazing thing about God, instead of taking away this love that is constantly disregarded, He continues to lavish us with even more. That’s just who God is, He is love and even as we go through discipline and suffering that is created by our own sin, He continues to pour out His love upon us. That is the conclusion that the Psalmist comes to at the end of the Psalm.
Nevertheless, he looked upon their distress,
when he heard their cry.
For their sake he remembered his covenant,
and relented according to the abundance of his steadfast love.
And the question that begs to be asked is why do we reject the love of God. Well the short answer is this, when you receive a favor from someone, you have really one of two ways to respond emotionally. You either feel gratitude or you feel indebted. Gratitude is a positive emotion and draws people into relationships. Indebtedness is a negative emotion and pulls relationships apart. We often create a debtor’s situation with our gift giving. I think a large part of the answer of why people reject God’s love is we don’t want to feel indebted to anyone or anything, even towards God. We don’t want to feel indebted for our life, for our many blessings, even for our own salvation.
Fredrick NIetzche, the famous philosopher, realized that gratitude was highly important in the pursuit of happiness. His expressios of gratitude, however, was pretty interesting. In acknowledging the importance of gratitude, he once said, “I am thankful to my whole life.” It’s clear from that statement that in regards to the most important gift, the gift of life, he didn’t know whom to thank. But I think Nietzche knew whom to thank because he was the son of a Lutheran pastor after all. In his many writings, it’s clear that he had some misconceptions and misgivings about God and he didn’t want to be indebted to God for his brilliance and success.
And that’s the thing, many people assume that a relationship with God is based on indebtedness. But it is our relationship with sin that actually causes that debt. This is why many try to live a good, moral life, so that we can pay off that debt. The Scriptures on the other hand tell us that sin creates a debt that no one can pay except for God alone becasue it is against God and God alone that we sin against.
And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
III. Conclusion:
In the end, God’s goodness and love are fully realized in the gospel of Jesus Christ as described in the famous verse from John. Through the sacrifice of Christ, we are given the gift of eternal life and for this gift, the only payment required is gratitude and the debt to love. Gratitude towards God draws us into a love relattionship with Him becasue it cancels the debt created by the sin that pulled us apart from. The only debt left is the debt to love.
John Piper writes that there are three factors that determine our levels of gratitude in relationship to a gift.
1. The importance to us of the gift that is offered. The greater the personal value, the greater the gratitude.
2. The sacrifice it cost someone to give us the gift. This could be time, money, or thoughtfulness.
3. Our own sense of unworthiness to receive the gift. We are far more grateful for something that is given to us freely as opposed to something that we have earned. We are more apt to be filled with joy when the gift is completely unexpected. CS Lewis in his account of his own conversion writes about being surprised by joy.
If it is true that God gave his only begotten Son as a payment, a personal sacrifice for our gift of eternal life, it forever settles the question of whether or not God is loving and good. And ultimately God leaves all of us with a decision, will you receive this gift that God has freely given to you and choose to live a life filled of eternal gratitude.