Thanksgiving
- Ashland Church of Christ
- Nov 24, 2024
- 14 min read
Updated: Nov 24, 2024
Guest Pastor J Cook
November 24, 2024
Thanksgiving - Gratitude through the storms
Click the arrow to expand and collapse the scripture verse.
'speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. '
'Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. '
3 Attitudes that Steal Our Gratitude
Pride
Critical / Negative Spirit
Carelessness / Unappreciative
Thanksgiving
Gratitude Ps 107 - Give thanks to God for all He's done. Count your many blessings. Count them one by one. Psychologists today tell us that sincere gratitude, thanksgiving is the healthiest of all human emotions.
Expansive Our thanksgiving should be expansive.
Give thanks in all circumstances. Have you ever been caught up where life seems to be so out of control for you? Nothing seems to be going right at the time. And he expects us to be grateful? Thankful? How can we be thankful of those things? Yet the Apostle Paul was one of those that no one had suffered as much as he had.
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Transcribed by Turbo Scribe
And here we are this Thursday celebrating Thanksgiving together. And I just find it amazing how as life progresses, it seems like things go quicker and quicker. I wanted to give you a few details about Thanksgiving that you might not have known.
Did you know that, let me put it this way, did you know that Sarah Hale, the same lady that wrote Mary Had a Little Lamb, was the one responsible for us having a national holiday called Thanksgiving. She tried to talk for a long time, Abraham Lincoln, to where she finally surrendered to it. This Thursday, 46 million turkeys will be cooked.
Butterball takes more than 100,000 cookie-related phone calls each Thanksgiving. The average American consumes, this was really, 4,500 calories in their Thanksgiving meal. A quick little context for that is like eating eight Big Macs.
The tradition of football being played on Thanksgiving goes back to 1876 when Yale and Princeton faced off. So why does this have to do with my sermon? You guessed it, absolutely nothing. Just wanted to talk about Thanksgiving.
It's the one thing we set aside in our busy schedules to give thanks to God. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, but the Word of God tells us that we don't just do that on a given day. We're supposed to be doing that constantly, constantly.
We'll show you scriptures that indicate that. If you're following along in your Bible, I haven't been given the opportunity. Years ago, we had it flashed up there.
I tell them that we'll give you an opportunity to find it. It's Ephesians, the fifth chapter, verses 19 and 20. And then just read a verse or so from 1 Thessalonians, the fifth chapter, verse 16.
Ephesians 5, 19, and 20, and then 1 Thessalonians 5, 16. Reading from Ephesians, the fifth chapter, tells Christians to speak to one another with souls, hymns, and spiritual songs. Singing that music in your heart to the Lord, always.
Notice that, giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Always giving thanks. In 1 Thessalonians, the fifth chapter, verse 16, it says, Be joyful always.
Pray continually. Give thanks in all circumstances. This is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.
Notice the other important words in these passages, always. Continually. In all circumstances.
It sounds like Paul is talking specifically to a church family, but he's not. He's talking to Christians as a whole. He's trying to suggest to them that there's never a time if we have the proper perspective.
That's the key. Incidentally, those that were out here in front, you stole my sermon. You said a bunch of stuff.
I was going to say my sermon, but I'm going to say it anyway. I believe there are at least three attitudes that do steal our gratitude. One is pride.
It's an attitude that says, nobody ever gave me anything. I've worked hard for everything I have. For years, you've studied hard, but my money's paying off.
With this kind of attitude, we find it hard to be thankful to God when we rely on the blessings for ourselves. This is in varying degrees. Very few are that blatant.
I'm reminded of the old movie Shenandoah. Jay Stewart's wife had died. She was the spiritual leader of the household.
They said prayers and went to church and everything because of her influence. Jay was a reluctant guy that decided he was going to keep some of the traditions. You see a picture of them sitting at the table.
The mother gone. Jay Stewart taking off his hat, and he says these words in his prayer. Lord, we cleared this land.
We plowed it, sowed it, and harvested it. We took the harvest. It wouldn't be here.
We wouldn't be eating it if we hadn't done it all by ourselves. We worked hard for every crumb and morsel, but we thank you just the same anyway, Lord, for the food. We're grateful about the food.
You notice the arrogance there, the pride that suggests that the good things that you have are only because you worked so hard for it. That's pride. It doesn't recognize that you are where you are blessed with the things you are blessed with because God allowed that to happen in your life.
The second thing, though, I think that kind of steals away our gratitude is a critical or negative spirit. I remember the story of a guy that had a how they got to be friends because they were so opposites. There was this guy that was always this positive, forward-looking guy, and his best friend was the guy that the glass was half empty all the time.
He was negative and couldn't see anything good in anything that happened. The optimistic friend happened to be going past a pet store, and he looked there, and it said, exceptional sports dog, $5,000. He thought, whoa, that's awful steep for a dog.
So he goes in and asks him, what's so exceptional about this dog? He said, don't tell anyone. They won't believe this, but this dog, it walks on water. One of them, you heard him walking on water.
Don't tell my joke, will you? Anyway, he said, the dog walks on water. He said, it's an incredible dog. Well, the guy thought, well, if it does that, then I'm going to take it.
So he spent $5,000 that he didn't have, and he went with his friend the next day. It was duck season, and they were going out in duck season, sporting dog. He thought he'd bring him along there.
They called in, fortunately, the first ducks that they saw. They worked right in, and they were able to take two of them down. The guy looked at his dog and said, sport.
Sport tracks where the birds have fallen. Got out of the boat and tippy-toed across the water, tippy-toed back. Found the other duck, tippy-toed across it, tippy-toed back.
The optimistic friend said, what do you think of my new dog? He says, get out of here. He can't swim, can he? You know, you look at a third attitude, and that's just plain flat-out carelessness. Not caring, not thinking about it, but not really appreciating the fact that you were in the position that you were in because God allowed you that.
The Israelite people, they grumbled because they had no food. So God miraculously sent man, which was a crust-like bread, to come to the ground each day, accept the Sabbath day. Then they started to grumble because they had the same thing every day.
They just couldn't think of anything positive. It's been said that if the stars only hang out once every ten years, we would probably stay all night long just to watch them. But as it is, we see them all the time, and so it becomes commonplace.
So also the children of Israel find it very easy to complain about something that they receive every morning and then think, oh, God's providing this thing. One of the prettiest places in Spain I ever was fortunate enough to travel was the road to Havana in Hawaii. I don't know if you ever got the chance to.
We went with my best friend from college and my cousin. They were married. We went there.
It's a 64.4 mile long stretch of scenic roadway. This place is known for, it has 620 curves, 59 bridges, 46 of which are single lane. The road winds through lush green forests and frequently cited as one of the most scenic drives in the United States.
The drive is relatively short, but it is an easier road to navigate because of all the curves and all of the single lane bridges there. And my question at the time that we were going through there, who do you see every now and then? Probably the old house right on the road to Havana, up a little bit higher, nothing obstructing the view to the west. And I said, boy, every morning, every evening, they have this incredible view of God's created things.
And my question was this. Do you think they ever grow tired of that? Do you think it's possible that in the human spirit for us to be in such a lavish, blessed place, but because of it becoming common for them, they just take it for granted? Do they ever get tired of it? The children of Israel, they needed to realize that they were tired of it, that God was blessing them every day. They needed to realize that they had His protection.
They had material goods. They had nothing to worry about outside of just the simple fact that they were not grateful. And that always throws us in a terrible place.
I want to just very quickly go through three things that I think that about Thanksgiving that I hope that you will think about as you come up this Thursday. One of the courses we used to sing was this, enter His gates with thanksgiving in your heart. In Psalm 107, give thanks to the Lord for He is good.
We should express our thanks to God for all that He's done for us. And I think that one of the key things is we should express, not generalize, thank you God for our blessings. That seems to be the generalized thing.
But remember the old hymn, count your many blessings, name them one by one. There's a wisdom in that old song. And that is that sometimes we are guilty of being very what? We're very nonchalant about the things that we find ourselves thanking the Lord for.
You know, in Luke 17, we found where 10 men were healed by Jesus of their leprosy. One out of those 10 men, only one came back to give thanks to Jesus. And here's the question.
Jesus said, where are the other nine? Now, Jesus is God. Jesus knows what's in the hearts of people. Do you suppose the other nine were thankful? I believe they were.
I believe that they were so caught up in the moment that they didn't thank. But here's the thing. Why did He ask, where are the rest of them? There's only this one guy that is thanking me.
And I can only guess that there's an underlying, underpinning thing there. And that is, I think God wants us to express our thanksgiving. It is wasted.
It is just something that we enjoy but we don't ever thank Him specifically for. We're made whole by our thanksgiving. Psychologists today tell us that sincere gratitude, thanksgiving is the healthiest of all human emotions.
Hans Selby, who has considered the father of stress studies, has said that gratitude produces more positive emotional energy than any other attitude in life. God desires our thanksgiving. He lifts Him up and glorifies Him.
And thanksgiving endures Him to us. It draws us closer. If we're not grateful, we do not express our thanksgiving.
Then it can have the opposite effect. Romans 1, verse 12 says, For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile, which means empty, and their foolish hearts were darkened. This passage seems to imply something that we don't like to take a careful look.
That is that we're ungrateful to God. We will soon fall away. Our hearts will become hardened.
There we see the pride people keeping from worshiping God and being thankful. So our thanksgiving really should be expressed. Secondly, our thanksgiving should be expansive.
When I was a little kid, we had prayers that we gave. I'm sure that you did too. And prayers in heels would be thanking for our food and those types of things.
But the truth is that as we grow in the Lord, we're able to pinpoint and see that these things are made possible because God has blessed us. And that we should be thankful to Him. It shouldn't be more expansive as we move on.
The inventory of our blessings. Do we really ever give thought to the fact that we are so blessed? Beyond measure. Other churches, other nations.
You know, at Thanksgiving, I'll guarantee you we're going to do something that it still makes me uncomfortable. I confess this to you. Jane, the matriarch of our family, started it several years ago.
But before we eat, which I think is a bribe to tell you the truth. Before we eat, she wants us to stand in a big circle and say something. One thing for which we're grateful.
It surprised me as I'm listening to the rest of them go around there and praying to you. If I'm last, they're going to take up all of the answers. I'm going to get messed up.
But it's hard. It is hard to express. You're so vulnerable at that moment.
Unless you're going to say I'm thankful for life or whatever it might be. Looking at a person and saying I'm thankful that you're in my life. Those are the type of inventories that I think that we need to make.
We need to also thank Him for the difficulty of life. A man brought his son to the grocery store. But as soon as they walked in the store, the young child began to throw temper tantrums.
He would pull stuff out of the cart and throw it. And he would yell and scream and carry on. While they got each other, the child would yell and throw.
And despite the scene, his son was causing it. The father was cool and collected. Slowly and calmly he would say, don't worry, Donald.
It'll be alright. We'll be home soon. We'll have cookies and take a nice nap and everything will be alright.
It's alright, Donald. The nearby mother was impressed with the father's self-control and wanted to express her gratitude for such a calm parenting style. Sir, I'm amazed at your ability to be so calm.
It's not every day that I see such patient and gracious parenting. She looked down and said, Donald, why are you so upset? Donald says, oh no, ma'am. You're mistaken.
The father interjected, this is my son, Henry. I'm Donald. This is a tough one.
Give thanks in all circumstances. Have you ever been caught up where life seems to be so out of control for you? Nothing seems to be going right at the time. And he expects us to be grateful? Thankful? How can we be thankful of those things? Yet the Apostle Paul was one of those that no one had suffered as much as he had.
He'd been run out of town, beaten, whipped, imprisoned, betrayed by plants, naked, cold, hungry, shipwrecked, and stoned because of his faith. Yet he stopped in the middle of all that discord of his biology and said, it's important. All of the good and all the bad.
We have to still give thanks because God still is in control. Romans 8 says, I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed to us. And then second Corinthians, he said, that's why for Christ's sake I delight in my weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecution, and in difficulties.
For when I am weak, then I am strong. The Philippian jailer was a good example. You have an earthquake.
You have everything falling apart in the world. They didn't have public silence there. What are they doing? They're praising the Lord, singing songs.
And the jailer, who didn't know them at all, thought, how can these people be praising something that is so disastrous? It's going to cost me my life. And yet that very same evening, he and his whole household were baptized into Christ because he found out that in having an active and living faith, it also gives us a thankfulness knowing that God has blessed us. And even in times where we don't understand and our world is falling apart, it's still important to know that God is in control and will bless us.
You hear people all the time, they've had prayer requests out of a loved one that has cancer. They're going to have a corrective surgery, and hopefully they hope that things will work out. And people are praying left and right, and finally the cancer comes back.
Everything's fine. They got it all. The response of people in that time is right, but is it complete? They'll say, oh, God is good.
God is so good. Now, is he good? Yes, he is. But what if he had answered no? What if he said, no, I've got for my own reasons the time to take this one? Is God still good? Absolutely.
God is still good. The blessing of our imperfect life. When the Israelites focused on what they didn't have, they failed to see all the things that they did have.
Oh, we have some difficult times, maybe even times that we've despaired even of life itself. But when we really look at all the benefits of life, I think we find that it's good to be alive, to feel the wind in our face, to see the sunrise, to fall in love, to see our child for the first time, a newborn baby. Life might not be all that it's cracked up to be.
No one has a perfect life. No one has been blessed by God in order to never experience hardships and pain. But in the middle of it all, he teaches us.
He tutors us. He encourages us in our time of loss, in our time of sorrow. I was speaking this last year at a memorial of a wonderful lady from our church.
She was absolutely one of our greatest neighbors, next door neighbors. And Jeanette and Bill were just people that we thought the world of. And Jeanette, she was gone in her 90s.
And I was in the middle of leading a memorial service, and then out of the blue, I couldn't think of her name. I thought, how is that possible that I can't think of her name? Something just wasn't right. Jay and my two girls were noticing changes in the way that I walked and talked.
Concerned people at the church were probably asking, is Jay all right? Finally, we went to a neurologist in Springfield. And in late June, I was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. My first response was, thank God for the Parkinson's disease.
That was my first reaction to it. Thank you for all the uncertainties that this diagnosis will bring. Thank you for the burdens this will put on Jay and my family.
Thank you for the physical limitations it will eventually bring to my body. But I am thankful in the midst of all of this. Not because of that, but in the midst of this, I'm thankful so far that I've reacted well to the medications and show limited progress of the disease.
I'm grateful to figure out what's going on, which was going on, and we didn't know what was causing it. Now it's revealed, so we know what we're dealing with. I'm thankful to know that God's strength has made ended my weakness.
I'm thankful for all that he has changed my perspective of a healthy day. In all things, I'm going to give thanks. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed.
We're perplexed, but not in despair. We're persecuted, but not abandoned. Struck down, but not destroyed.
Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us the eternal glory that afar outweighs them all. So we gaze our eyes at what is unseen. Not what is unseen, but what is unseen.
We pray with you. Father, I am thankful for life. I'm thankful for this week.
We can be with family, and we can remember, and we can be grateful for all that you have done for us. We just pray that in the course of all things, even when life is always the way it was originally, Father, you alone are wise and good. Father, you have our best interest at heart.
So we thank you today. We praise you today. We just pray your continued blessing as we move on in our lives.
In Jesus' name, amen.
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