Hope Church LV Sermons
Thanksgiving
As we begin this morning, I want to ask you to do something but the good news is there is no right or wrong answer to what I'm about to ask you to do but there is an honest answer. I want to put a statement up on the screen in a moment and in that statement there is a blank and what I want to ask you to do this morning in your mind is to fill in that blank with what is true about your life. You don't have to say it out loud but I want you to plug in the word that would make this statement true about your life. Not what you want to be true but what is actually true. Now let's put the statement up on the screen, here is the statement, I am a blank person. Now there are a lot of possibilities of what could have popped into your mind first. Some people may have thought I am a friendly person. Some people may have thought initially I am a busy person or I am a creative person. I am a wise person. You may have thought grumpy. You may have thought passionate. You may have thought selfish or loud or loving. What was the first word that popped in your mind when you saw that statement? I am curious this morning. If anybody in the room had the word thankful, pop in your mind first. Now if you hear this morning and the first word that popped in your mind about you is that you are a thankful person, I want to go ahead and dismiss you this morning because I got nothing for you today. Maybe the word thankful was not the first word that popped in your mind but are you? Would you consider yourself to be a thankful person? Moving off the heels of Thanksgiving this past week and before we get to enamored with Christmas, our teaching team thought it would be appropriate to take this Sunday and examine what the Bible says about what giving thanks actually looks like in the life of a Jesus follower. So this morning what we are going to do is we are going to allow the Word of God to recalibrate our heart around some principles that the Bible teaches regarding Thanksgiving. And I will be honest, this is a principle, these are ideas that are very difficult for us to relate with and here is one reason why because of our culture. You see our culture says that Thanksgiving is a holiday that takes place for 24 hours once a year. But the Bible says Thanksgiving is an ongoing expression of a grateful heart. You see, way before the pilgrims had their moment in the 1600s, God had already inspired the scriptures to teach us about what Thanksgiving is all about. So if you have your Bible this morning, turn to the book of Psalms chapter 100. You can also pull this up on your phone app, we are also going to put it on the screen for you today so that you can follow along with us as we read. The book of Psalms is the most diverse and most quoted book in all of the Bible. And when it was written, obviously it was not written like this. It was written as songs that were sung in the Jewish culture. These words were hymns that were sung by the people of God as an act of worship when they were put to music. So this morning, I want to read for us the entire chapter of Psalm 100, now before you get nervous, that's just five verses. So let's start reading in Psalm 100 verse 1, "Shout joyfully to the Lord all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before Him with joyful singing. Know that the Lord Himself is God. It is He who made us and not we ourselves. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture." Verse 4, "Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him, bless His name, for the Lord is good and His loving kindness is everlasting. And His faithfulness to all generations." What I want to do in our short time together today is I want to pull out of this passage for foundational principles about what it looks like to give thanks. Some principles that if we are going to be men and women who on a regular basis express the gratitude of our heart in the form of thanksgiving, we must understand these principles. Now these are really, really simple statements, statements that more than likely you may know. But here's what happens in the midst of a busy culture when everything is changing. In the midst of our circumstances changing, our emotions changing, our attitude, our conditions changing, what can happen is we push some of these biblical principles to the side because we get distracted. But thanksgiving is a big deal in the Bible. So much so that after studying the scriptures and their totality, Major Ian Thomas drew this conclusion. If in any situation you are not prepared to give thanks, you are out of the will of God. It's a challenging statement. So this morning, here's the question. What principles can we learn from Psalm chapter 100 that can help us get our heart and our head around what it looks like to live a life of gratitude and of thanksgiving? So if you're taking notes, I want you to write down this first principle. Regardless of my situation, I can rejoice in the Lord. Regardless of what's happening around me in the ever-changing culture and my ever-changing emotions, I can rejoice in the Lord. If you watch television or read magazines or follow current trends at all, you know that we live in a world that is on a reckless pursuit of finding and experiencing joy. We live in a world and we'll spend money, we'll go on trips, we'll chase relationships like no other, why? Because we want to experience joy. But so many people on the planet have done all those things and they have still found themselves unsatisfied because they are looking for joy in the wrong place. And in verses one and two of Psalm 100, we have a clear call to action. The Psalmist here uses some very direct language about joy. Look at verse one and two again. It says, "Shout joyfully to the Lord all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before Him with joyful singing." Do you hear the call to action? He says shout, he says serve, he says come before the Lord. And he says as you do those things, it is to be drenched in joy, gladness, and singing. Now there is no way that we can obey what the Scripture says in this call to action. If you and I do not have a clear understanding as to where joy comes from. So I want to clarify this morning, God is the only source of joy. He is the only person that you and I can ever find joy in. We can search the world, we can make every pursuit possible, but the only source of joy is God. I want to put a verse on the screen and I want you to look in this verse. What the Psalmist says is the source of the things that he talks about. Look at this verse. Psalm chapter 16, it says this, "I've set the Lord continually before me." And then he begins to talk. He says you will make known to me the path of life. In your presence is fullness of joy. In your right hand there are pleasures forever. Do you see it? Do you see the source of joy in this passage? The Bible here associates God's presence with not just partial joy but fullness of joy. And how foolish of us, and I'm as guilty as anybody, when I know the truth of the Scriptures yet I look for joy in so many places that I know in my heart I'll never find it. You see the Scripture here is telling us that God is deeply concerned with you and I experiencing joy in our relationship with him. So much so that in this verse he commands us to be joyful. It's a command and he puts joy in the category of his will for your life and for my life. Let me show it to you in other places in the Scriptures in 1 Thessalonians 5. Listen to what he says about joy. He says rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Joy is a command. One of the reasons I can always be thankful is because I can always be joyful. Because regardless of my situation I can rejoice in the Lord. That does not change. John Ortberg said it this way. He said the Bible puts joy in the non-optional category. Joy is a command. Joylessness is a serious sin. It may be the sin most readily tolerated by the church. And then he asked two rhetorical questions. How much damage have joyless Christians done to the cause of Christ? How often have people misunderstood God because they attributed to him the gram judgmental defensive soul-wearing spirit of many who claimed to be his followers? When I read that this week I was very convicted. Because I don't always think that way, I don't always connect those dots. But it's true nonetheless. As believers we're commanded to be joyful but not just that because of a relationship with God we can experience joy, God will never command us to do something that he does not make the provision for us to accomplish. And one of the things he calls us to is joy. As a church I hope we will choose joy. Tim Hensell said this, "We cannot avoid pain, but we can avoid joy." You see, we have to embrace what God's called us to, a life that is joyful and regardless of what's happening around us, regardless of our situation, regardless of your status on Facebook, we can still rejoice in the Lord. Therefore, we can always give thanks. There's a second principle in this verse in these verses, "Regardless of my situation, I belong to the one true God." Something that does not change is that you and I can rejoice in the Lord. Something else that does not change in the life of a believer is that we belong to the one true God. Look at verse three. It says, "Know that the Lord himself is God, it is he who has made us and not we ourselves, we are his people and the sheep of his pasture." The word "know" means to experience, not to have information, not to possess a theory, but to know something is true because you've experienced it for yourself. It means to be a witness. The Bible says, "I want you to know that he's God, that you know he made everything." Those are two powerful phrases, but I want to draw your attention for this principle to the last two phrases in verse three. He says, "We are his people, the sheep of his pasture." I love how personal those verses are. It says, "We're his people." In the sheep of his pasture, the Bible uses two illustrations to describe our relationship with God. First of all, the Bible says, "We're his people," meaning he's our king, he's our ruler. It's his kingdom in which you and I dwell. Here to love him, we are to submit to him where his servants. His agenda is to be our agenda. We belong to him as his children and as his people. And once we have been born into his kingdom, that will never change. But the second illustration here to describe our relationship with God, it says, "We are his sheep." Now if because we're his people, he's our king, if we're his sheep, he is our shepherd. As you study the literal understanding of sheeps, a sheep and its shepherd in the east, it's a phenomenal study. If you've never done that study before, I'd encourage you and your small group, maybe to dig in and study, but we learned some powerful things in why God chose this illustration to really clarify for us our relationship with him. In the east, a shepherd is called to provide, to care for and protect and to lead the sheep. So much so that a sheep will only obey the shepherd's voice. Other people can say the same commands, they can put on the same clothing, but the sheep will only obey the shepherd's voice because they know him that well. But it not only says that we're his sheep, it says we're the sheep of his pasture. Not a pasture, but his pasture, telling us that God takes a personal responsibility in watching over us. Scripture is telling us that God takes the fact that we belong to him very serious. Regardless of what's happening around you, one thing that does not change is that you and I belong to the one true God. And because that does not change, we can always give thanks. Last past summer, Char and I went on a sabbatical, it was just a break to get away and refresh, and there were no meetings, there were no emails, there were no phone calls, it was just a time for her and I to get away and just refresh after a time here at Hope Serving. And it was phenomenal and we decided to spend our whole time in Southern California. And at the end of our sabbatical, it turned out that the first Monday I was back on the job, so to speak, Vance and I had to fly to Atlanta for a conference. And I remember waking up that Monday morning and just being honest with you, I was not in a good mood. I didn't want to be at the airport, I wanted to be in California. And so I get to the airport and I still didn't want to be there, I wanted to be in California. And so we get on the plane, we fly to Atlanta, we get there and we spend the first part of the day just kind of networking and meeting some people and making some connections, talking with church planters, and the whole time, I just had a bad attitude, I was in a bad mood, I didn't want to be there. And so we go into the night session that night and I'm thinking, all right, when can this be over with, I want to go to the hotel, hopefully start over again tomorrow, and don't act like you haven't been there, don't judge, some of you are in that mood right now. But I just wasn't in a good mood, and so we go through the time of music and if this was the room, I was probably sitting somewhere right over there, and I'm there, you know, playing on my phone, just waiting for it to be over with, and the speaker gets up that night. And the speaker gets up and starts talking about how as Christians, a lot of days, we're just not satisfied. And I'm thinking, yeah, you tell them, they need to hear this, these church planters, and I'm sitting there just as selfish and inward focused as I could possibly be thinking, can we just do something else, all right? And he got up and he asked a question, and I don't think everybody in the room was as blown away by this question as I was, but it landed on me like a turn of bricks. He gets up and he asks this question, and I'm there in my heart just as selfish and inward focused as ever, and he says this, he says, has the resurrection worn off in you? He said, because that's as good as it gets. If you're waiting on something else to happen to blow you away, you're going to be disappointed because the resurrection is as good as it gets. But have you let the resurrection wear off in you? And I'm sitting there, I'm convicted, I'm embarrassed, I'm frustrated. I want to just get on the ground and lay down for a little bit before God. He said, are you still flippin' out about what happened in your heart because of the gospel? So I want to ask you a question this morning. When you consider that through his death in life, God has made us to be his children and he has brought us to spiritual eternal life. Because of your attitude, have you let the power of the resurrection wear off in you? Or are you still flippin' out to be a child of the one true God? Because that does not change, and because that does not change, we can always give thanks. Here's a third principle out of this passage, regardless of my situation. I am invited to worship God. Look at verse 4. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise give thanks to him, bless his name. The way I learned this verse was actually growing up singing hymns in church. I was a teenager before I realized that these words were actually scripture. I always just considered them to be hymns that we sing at church. But in this verse, there are a couple of references to locations that probably didn't do a lot in you when you read it. But in a Jewish culture, when they read it, it was a big deal. What's referenced here are gates and courts. When they read this Psalm, they thought about the temple. The place where God's presence dwelt. You see in the temple, you would enter in through a gate, and in that gate you would see an outer court that was pretty big. And if you kept moving forward, you would go through yet another gate to an inner court. And in that inner court, there was an altar. And then if you were to continue going, which not many people could, you would enter into a place called the holy place. And then there was a veil, and then there was the holy of holies, which is where the ark of the covenant was, and God's presence dwelt there. So verse four is saying, and when these Israelites would sing this song, they're saying, look, enter his gates, enter his courts, it's talking about worship. This verse is an invitation to worship. Did you know there is one thing that you can give God that no one else on the planet can give him? It's your worship. Nobody else can come in here this morning and give God your worship, but you can. This verse invites us, God is saying, come near, come into my gates, come into my courts, come near to me, thanksgiving, praise, blessing his name. That's worship. That's worship, regardless of what we're walking through today, we are invited to worship God. Let me ask the question, what's the difference in gratitude and thanksgiving? What's the difference? For a lot of my life, I've used those words interchangeably, but there's a big difference between gratitude and thanksgiving. You see, gratitude is what I feel, thanksgiving is what I do because I am grateful. Tim Keller said it this way, gratitude is what you feel, thanksgiving is what you do. You see, it's one thing to be grateful, it's another thing to give thanks. It's giving is simply gratitude spilling over on the outside, and real gratitude always has an outward expression. If you're grateful, you're going to worship. That's true. If you're really grateful in your heart, it's going to express itself on the outside through thanksgiving as you worship God. As I studied this week, one of the things that was really convicting for me is I recognize I feel like I'm a pretty grateful person, but that gratitude does not regularly express itself on the outside in the form of giving thanks. I was really convicted about that this week. It's unhealthy. Listen, if you're grateful for somebody, tell them. If you're grateful for the people in your life, tell them, and here's always the excuse, well, they know, well, maybe not. It's interesting to me how many people I talk to, and they say that about God. They say, you know, my worship, it's, you know, it's not all that because God knows I love him. It's a bogus excuse. There are people in my life all the time, and I assume that they know I'm grateful for them, but that gratitude needs to spill over into the action of actually giving thanks. I believe Christians should be the most encouraging and thankful people on planet Earth. In this invitation to worship, it's never going to change. God has invited us to worship him, and because of that, we can always be grateful, and that gratitude should spill over into us giving thanks. Well, here's the fourth principle this morning. We want to have some time to respond, regardless of my situation, God is eternally good. Regardless of my situation, God is eternally good. Look at verse 5, "For the Lord is good, His loving kindness is everlasting, and His faithfulness to all generations." To me, this verse clarifies one of the greatest promises in all of the Bible. Here it is, God does not change. I'm so encouraged by that. I'm so encouraged to read the pages of Scripture, and God's activity and His love for humanity and His pursuit of humanity and know that that same God is exactly the same today because God does not change. C.H. Spurgeon said this, "So long as we are receivers of mercy, we must be givers of thanks. So long as we are receivers of mercy, we must be givers of thanks. To me, verse 5 should be the heart cry from every believer who has experienced the undeserving mercies of God, He doesn't change." Donald Barnhouse lost his wife in his late thirties, and he tells the story of leaving his wife's funeral, and he began driving down the road with his 11-year-old daughter. And as they were driving, his daughter said, "Daddy, I have a question for you." She said, "What is the valley of the shadow of death?" You see she had just heard that verse at the funeral, and she was curious, "What is that? What is the valley of the shadow of death?" And Mr. Barnhouse thought for a few minutes, and they were just driving down the road. And about that time, a tractor trailer, your large 20-foot tractor trailer, passed them by in the other lane. And as the truck passed, its shadow fell over their car. And Mr. Barnhouse said, "Well, sweetie, let me ask you a question. You see that tractor trailer. Would you rather be hit by the full force of that truck, or would you rather be hit by a shadow?" And she said, "Well, Daddy, that's an easy answer. I'd rather be hit by a shadow." And Mr. Barnhouse said something that is profound. He said, "Sweetheart. Jesus took the full brunt of the truck of death so that as believers we're just hit by a shadow." That's mercy. You see, we'll never know the valley of death. We're just going to know the valley of the shadow of death. You see, Jesus was abandoned so we don't have to be. We're just hit by a shadow. Jesus was beaten so we don't have to be. We're just hit by a shadow. Jesus died. He took the full brunt of sin, death, and shame so that as His children were just hit by the shadow, you say, "Why?" Mercy and grace. And the same God that was passionate in that moment when Jesus was crucified and brought back to life is the exact same God that we serve today because He does not change. I believe we live in a world where we need some concrete stuff to wrap our heart around. We're easily sidetracked to think about the stuff that doesn't matter. We're easily sidetracked to think about the stuff that's negative and that gets us down. This morning I hope what you've heard is some stuff that you should be encouraged by and should be consistent reasons for you to give things. I want to put all the statements up on the screen. Here's what we've said this morning, regardless of what I'm living in, regardless of my situation, I can rejoice in the Lord. I belong to the one true God. I'm invited to worship and God is eternally good. Maybe you write that down and put that somewhere where you see it all the time because those statements are true, regardless of what you're living in. And if God is always offering joy, never letting me go as His child, always inviting me to worship and He does not change, that should produce gratitude on the inside that spills over into thanksgiving on the outside. Now I want to give you a quick summary statement that's very important. Here it is. The closer I walk with Jesus, the more grateful I become. You see, the closer I get to Him in an intimate love relationship, the more undeserving I realize I am of knowing Him and walking in intimacy with God. Clyde Cranford said, "Only when we see the holiness of God, can we see the blackness of our own sin." You see, the challenge this morning isn't for you to walk out of here and try to be more grateful. No, you see, gratitude is a response. And when we walk in closeness in intimacy with God, the only thing we can do is respond with gratitude that spills over on the outside in the form of thanksgiving because we realize just how unworthy we are. The closer that we walk with Jesus, the more gratitude stirs up and spills over in our heart. But unfortunately, the opposite of that statement is true as well. Not only the closer I walk with Jesus, the more grateful I become, but the less I walk with Jesus, the more ungrateful I become. If you hear this morning and you're just in a bad place, potentially it could be the reason you're not thankful. The reason you're not grateful is because you're not walking with Jesus. The antonym of the word thanksgiving is critical. So in those moments, when you find yourself and you notice yourself living with an unthankful critical spirit, it's not that there are not things in your life to be grateful for. It's probably that you're not walking with Jesus. Let's not spend the rest of our lives making excuses as to why we cannot be the most encouraging and thankful people on the planet. Let's be the generation that gets this right. Let's be the generation that understands, "Yeah, the world's going to change, my circumstances are going to change, my emotions are going to change." But there are some principles from the Scriptures that will never change. And because those things are true in my life as a believer, I can give thanks. [BLANK_AUDIO]