Give Your Thanks

GIVE YOUR THANKS –

(.a.k.a.) GIVE THANKS TO THE LORD – Sermon Central

We have much to be thankful for this time of the year. Sometimes, we get so busy with all the cooking, and eating, and (then) sleeping off our turkey and dressing that we forget that Thanksgiving is a time to GIVE OUR THANKS. This morning may be the only chance the Lord will have this week to get your attention and for you to GIVE YOUR THANKS.

Allow me to get your attention for a few minutes and to focus how we can be thankful for all that God has done for us. We should remember that our heavenly Father desires to have your attention on Him. Actually, God is very jealous of sharing you with the holiday coming up this week. There will be lots of festivities and family get together, but the Bible tells us that God is a jealous god. He has been like this ever since He first created the sun that shines, and the moon & the stars.

Let me show you how jealous God has been since the dawn of His Creation… Genesis 1:16

"God made two great lights -- the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.

What God calls “two great lights”, we call the sun and the moon, but this is what God told Moses to write down. I am glad that Moses listened closely and wrote things down very carefully, but why couldn’t God just have simply said “the sun and the moon”?

Instead He called them “two great lights”.

Moses used the Hebrew language when he wrote down what God told him. The words “sun and moon” were common words used by the Hebrew children, so why didn’t God use them (instead of “two great lights”?

The reason for this was because the Hebrew words for sun and moon were actually the names of false gods.

God knew this, and He was jealous of the false gods.

Apparently, the pagan people of the world were worshiping the sun and moon rather than worshipping the Great Creator of the Universe. God was jealous, and God did not like this at all! He wasn’t going to stand for it. Not for a minute. After all, the sun and the moon were His Creation, and no other god should have received credit for it.

So what God did was to deliberately leave out the names for the sun god and the god of the moon (from what He told Moses to write down).

That way the false gods didn’t draw the people’s attention away from worshipping God as the Creator.

The bottom line was that God was not happy with people worshipping any of the false gods.

And to this day – God is jealous of your giving attention to anything or any other god other than Himself!

Well here we are living in the 21st Century and the fact is this - God is still very jealous of what we do with our day…everyday…and especially our Thanksgiving Day.

We can all agree that it is important to spend time with our families and enjoy Thanksgiving Day…

But more importantly it is for you to remember to

GIVE YOUR THANKS.

Did you know that –

• Throughout the history of mankind there have been other things in God’s creation that have drawn attention away from the Creator?

• People have actually worshiped what God has created more than they have worshipped God?

• That people have worshipped the stars in the sky, the mountains, and God’s animals more than they have ever worshipped God?

Living today in the 21st Century we are not really tempted to worship the sun, or the moon, or the stars, or the mountains, or animals. No we consider ourselves to be sophisticated and educated…

Nevertheless, there are other things that can and will distract you from GIVING YOUR THANKS to God.

Especially on Thanksgiving Day. Even many of the blessings that you are thankful for can keep you from GIVING YOUR THANKS to God.

That is true – you can be so blessed with prosperity that you will neglect in GIVING YOUR THANKS to God.

Thanksgiving should be about our Lord. Amen?

Allow me to make a suggestion for you and your family this Thanksgiving….

Before you sit down at the Thanksgiving table with our friends and family to count our blessings, let us take a moment to count our greatest blessing.

“What is our greatest blessing?“

Our greatest blessing is God Himself.

And to Him you must GIVE YOUR THANKS!

The Holy Spirit will speak this to us with our text…

Text: Psalm 100

In our Bibles the Psalms appear as only one book among the many others books of the Old Testament, but to the Jews the Psalms were their hymnal for worshiping God. Some of the Psalms served as a songbook for worship. Other Psalms were performed by choirs and groups of musicians. Our church hymnal has many special hymns for the different seasons of the year (like Christmas and Easter). Likewise, the people of the Old Testament had were certain Psalms that they used for special celebrations of the year.