Thanksgiving 92

Last Sunday, the choir sang an anthem entitled “It is a Good Thing to Give Thanks Unto the Lord”. The lyrics were taken from Psalm 92, where David says…

“It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord and to sing praises to thy name, O most High.”

But the question I have this morning is “Why? Why is it a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord?”

Well, there are three reasons:

1. Because God tells us to.

And anything that God tells us to do is going to be good for us to do. The Psalms are full of exhortations to give thanks to the Lord:

Psalm 136:1 Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever.

Psalm 136:2 Give thanks to the God of gods. His love endures forever.

Psalm 136:3 Give thanks to the Lord of lords: His love endures forever.

Psalm 136:26 Give thanks to the God of heaven. His love endures forever.

Psalm 107:1 Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.

Psalm 107:8 Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men,

Psalm 107:15 Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men,

Psalm 107:21 Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men.

In fact, there are 19 separate commands to give thanks to the Lord throughout the Psalms. Why would God think it necessary to order us to thank him?

If you have ever raised children, you probably already know the answer. The giving of thanks is something that doesn’t come naturally to children; they need to be taught. How many times have you seen a mother say to her little toddler who has just received a gift, “Now what do you say?” And the little child, following that prompting, says “Thank you.” Hopefully, the need for prompting becomes less as the child grows older!

We know instinctively as parents that our children need to be taught to say thank you. We don’t want to see them grow up to be ingrates, to be thankless. A child who has never learned to say thank you will become an adult with a serious moral and spiritual handicap.

There’s something fundamental about thanksgiving that says “I need to learn to appreciate the things that come to me, and it is proper and fitting to express that appreciation. When someone does something for me, I need to say thank you. When someone gives something to me, I need to say thank you.”

In fact, the more thanksgiving you do, the more you will be able to recognize all you have to be thankful for. You become able to give thanks even for seemingly bad things.

Matthew Henry was a man like that. One day, as he was walking along the road, he was attacked by thieves, who robbed him of all his money. When he got home, he wrote these words in his diary:

“Let me be thankful first, because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse, they didn’t take my life; third, because although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth, because it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed.”

The Scottish preacher Alexander Whyte was famous for his grateful heart. In his pastoral prayer from the pulpit, he always found something to thank God for, even in bad times. One Sunday morning dawned stormy and rainy. There were very few people in the church that day.

One of the members of his congregation thought to himself “The preacher will have nothing to thank God for on a day like this.” But Alexander Whyte got up and began his pastoral prayer by saying “We thank Thee, O God, that it is not always like this.”

When you learn to say thanks, you begin to develop a grateful heart. And that is a tremendous asset to go through life with. Our sign outside the church says “A person who has never learned the language of gratitude will never be on speaking terms with happiness.”

A person who has never learned to say thank you for the little things of life is a person who will never ultimately recognize the grace of God when he sees it. (In fact, the word “gratitude” comes from the same word as grace.)

Jesus healed ten lepers. Only one came back to say “Thank you.” He was the only one who recognized that, as great as his physical healing was, there was an even greater blessing available to him - a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. But he never would have received that greater blessing unless he had returned to thank Jesus for the lesser.

So that’s why God tells us to give thanks to Him. It’s because he knows we are like little children who need to be taught, and need to be reminded, to say thank you.

2. Because giving thanks reminds us that we are God’s creatures.

There is a very tragic passage in the book of Romans, chapter 1…

Romans 1:18-25 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised.

Paul is talking here about something that theologians call “general revelation”. General revelation simply means that creation tells us about God’s existence. We receive certain information about God through the things that God has made.

Psalm 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.

So all people receive information from nature that tells us that there is a God, and that he is powerful, intelligent, and creative. But what do we do with that information? Paul says…

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him

There are two significant steps that man takes away from God:

1. He suppresses the truth about God that he learns from nature. You only need to look at a modern science text book to prove that. In seeking to explain the existence of the universe, and the origins of the human race, God is not mentioned.

Modern science says that everything that came to be simply happened by accident. The earth and the sun and the planets and the stars and the galaxies simply came into being by themselves.

And man, with all his intricacy, and with his inner yearnings for love and significance and immortality, is simply the product of a long series of evolutionary adaptations which started by pure chance.

That’s the first step, when you deny the existence of God the creator. Hand in glove goes the second…

2. They refused to give thanks.

Thanksgiving is an admission of dependence. It is a realization that all that you are and all that you have, you owe to God.

Obviously, if you deny that there is a God, then you have no one to say Thank You to. You stop thinking of yourself as the creature of a Creator, and you start thinking of yourself as a totally autonomous being responsible to no one.

You start living life simply on the basis of your own desires. When it comes to deciding what’s right and what’s wrong, you put yourself in place of God. And the moral and spiritual spiral downward begins. Paul describes it well in Romans 1.

Much of what we’re seeing in America today is happening because people have refused to acknowledge their dependence on God and stopped giving thanks to him. So they no longer see themselves as creatures who are accountable to their Creator for the way they live their lives.

3. Because giving thanks gives us a proper perspective on temporal things.

1 Thessalonians 5:18 says “give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” Well, it’s easy to give thanks when good things happen, but it’s not so easy to give thanks when bad things happen. But it’s important to give thanks whatever happens.

One of the lessons that we learn from the children of Israel in the OT is what happens when you forget to give thanks for the good things. God delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and led them into a land flowing with milk and honey. But within a generation, they had turned to idolatry. Why?

Because they had focused on the good things and forgotten God. Had they remembered that all these good things came from the hand of God, they wouldn’t have been so quick to turn away from him.

It’s important to thank God for the good things, because we so easily can begin to focus on the blessing rather than the God from whom all blessings flow. But it’s also important to thank God for the bad things in life.

Corrie Ten Boom tells the story of how she and her sister Betsy had just been transferred to the worst Nazi concentration camp she had ever seen. It was called Ravensbruck. When they entered the barracks, they found, to their horror, that it was infested with fleas.

That morning, their devotional reading in 1 Thessalonians had reminded them to rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks. Betsy told Corrie to stop and thank the Lord for every detail of their new living quarters, but Corrie just couldn’t thank God for the fleas. Finally, though, she gave in and thanked God even for the fleas.

During the months that they spent at that camp, they were surprised to find how openly they could hold Bible study and prayer meetings without the interference of the guards. It was not until several months later that they learned the reason. The German guards would not enter those barracks because of the fleas.

When we thank God, by faith, for the bad things in life, we put ourselves in the place where God can show us the blessing he has in mind for us.

Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Why should we give thanks unto the Lord?

1. Because God tells us to.

2. Because giving thanks reminds us that we are God’s creatures.

3. Because giving thanks gives us a proper perspective on temporal things.