Giving thanks!
Psalm 103
This morning I want to perform a small psychological experiment. Don’t worry I am not going to embarrass anyone. All I want you to do is to remember the first thought that comes into your mind when I ask you a question.
Can you believe that this Thursday is Thanksgiving Day?
When I wrote that question down in my preparation time I had an immediate thought.
My first thought was that means it in less than a month to Christmas. Let me clarify that the feeling in the pit of my stomach was not one of joy.
Maybe some of you started hear the count down clock…..
For some it would be all that was necessary for the meal and others how much time before the games start.
Some may have visually flashed onto images of family or empty places.
It may be true that every person in here had a different thought when the question was asked. Thanksgiving is sort of an odd combination of personal and group interactions for most families. That leads me to ask myself a basic question.
Why do we celebrate Thanksgiving?
A teacher in an elementary school asked her students that question and these are some of the replies:
Jamie Copley, 7, said people celebrate Thanksgiving because it’s the season where everyone joins together.
Christina McGuire, 7, said, "It’s a good month."
Kam Bowles, 6, said people celebrate Thanksgiving because "it’s a happy day."
"My granny cooks and it’s good," she said.
Bradley Ernsberger, 6, said he celebrates Thanksgiving because he is thankful for a lot of things. "I’m thankful for my friends, my limo ride for selling the most candy, my Superman costume I got to wear at Halloween and my little pumpkin I got," he said.
Selina McGregor, 6, said she knows why people all get together to celebrate on Thanksgiving Day. "It’s a wonderful year and a good time to share all that food," she said. "I love pumpkin pie," she added.
We make Thanksgiving Day about history. We get this wonderful image of pilgrims and Indians gathered around this massive table, covered with food, enjoying a meal together. We make something that is as American as Apple pie and baseball.
Of all the holidays that we celebrate in our culture and even as Christians I believe that Thanksgiving is the most Biblical. Not because you will find a direction in scripture to hold a thanks giving celebration. But because we are actually encouraged to continually give thanks to God.
Our scripture today is a psalm of David which is a Psalm of Thanks Giving.
Psalm 103 (NKJV)
Bless the LORD, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name!
Bless the LORD, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits:
Who forgives all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases,
Who redeems your life from destruction, Who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies,
Who satisfies your mouth with good things, So that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
The LORD executes righteousness And justice for all who are oppressed.
He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the children of Israel.
The LORD is merciful and gracious, Slow to anger, and abounding in mercy.
He will not always strive with us, Nor will He keep His anger forever.
He has not dealt with us according to our sins, Nor punished us according to our iniquities.
For as the heavens are high above the earth, So great is His mercy toward those who fear Him; As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
As a father pities his children, So the LORD pities those who fear Him.
For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.
As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, And its place remembers it no more.
But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting On those who fear Him, And His righteousness to children’s children,
To such as keep His covenant, And to those who remember His commandments to do them.
The LORD has established His throne in heaven, And His kingdom rules over all.
Bless the LORD, you His angels, Who excel in strength, who do His word, Heeding the voice of His word.
Bless the LORD, all you His hosts, You ministers of His, who do His pleasure.
Bless the LORD, all His works, In all places of His dominion.
Bless the LORD, O my soul!
The psalmist has quite a list of things to be thankful for. Here in America we have a day set aside to be thankful. It seems that even with our current economy and war and state of the nation in general no one has made the suggestion that we just call it off this year.
I am a little perplexed to understand how many families are thankful; maybe I mean to whom they are thankful.
When mankind fails to give God thanks it reveals how man views God.
A person that fails to acknowledge God’s existence is ultimately guilty of some form of Idolatry. (none of us are guilty of that here in worship this morning, right) There are some that pridefully fail to acknowledge that God is the source of all blessings giving credit to themselves.
I have noticed for a long time how the shows on TV push the combination of views. I once saw a Cartoon episode of the Simpsons where the rebellious son Bart is ask to pray for the meal. He says, “We thank you God for this meal, but we paid for it all ourselves anyway, so thanks for nothing.” Often we let pride in our accomplishments steal the acknowledgement of the blessings we receive for ourselves.
I guess that Thanksgiving has become a feel good holiday. We look over the past year and we are thankful for the good decisions, the resources, the things that people have done for us.
I suppose that many people are only thankful to and for other people which is important. But, I will suggest to you that the pilgrims and George Washington and Abraham Lincoln had something higher in mind when their celebrations were organized.
We can easily find at least three ways we could go after reading our scripture this morning. The first might be to talk about why we should be thankful. The second might be what we should be thankful for.
We are going to bypass the first two themes by reminding you that according to both the old and new testaments giving thanks to God for everything and in all times is a duty.
It should be a privilege, but it ends up that we have to be reminded in scripture to be thankful. With every breath and meal and hug and smile we should be giving God thanks continually.
The focus we will have this morning is on a third direction we can find in this scripture. We need to connect to how we should offer our thanks.
We are going to quickly hit on 4 elements of how we should give thanks.
-- Genuine thanks giving is sincere and not an automatic response. This psalm opens with, Bless the LORD, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name!
I don’t know how most of you were raised. But, let’s try another experiment, how do you respond to this question. You are in church and someone gives you a piece of gum and your mother says, “So what do you say…?” (Thank You)
I see that many of you were well trained by your parents to know how to act. You know how to say thank you in response to a kindness that someone offers you. It in ingrained in you and it is generally automatic.
Let me be clear, our giving thanks to God is never to be simply an act of courtesy. It must be more than that.
David thanks God with all that is within him. Generally speaking that means heart, mind and soul. When we do things from the heart we tend to say that it is genuine and real. It seems that the heart has more power over our actions than our mind.
When the heart guides our thanks we are acting out of love. When we are thankful out of emotion the mind is involved. Emotion is a strong influencer. The soul is the unifying element and is the source of our conscious decision to be thankful because we understand our blessings. David is reminding himself to be thankful with all he is and who he is.
David was known to offer praise by dancing in public, in front of God and everybody. He got completely into it. He reminds himself to not offer a half hearted praise and thanks giving.
Have any of us ever successfully offered our “full praise” to God…probably not.
If yes then I doubt that you were able to sustain it for long….Hours, minutes, perhaps seconds before the physical nature of our bodies took over. Our humanness is a limiting factor all by it self.
However, most of us have probably never even allowed ourselves to try to be fully involved sincere in giving our thanks and praise. We are held back by our pride and limits on how far we will allow others to witness out thanks basically we are held back by our sin….
Our thanks should come form all that is within us or at least as much as we can muster and that will make it sincere.
Our thanks is to be focused. It is to be focused on God.
David thanks God for the forgiveness of sins, healing form diseases, preservation of life, loving kindness and mercy, the good things in life and the renewal of the body. It seems a bit strange, he does not say he is thankful to people….He has a single focus of giving thanks to God. His praise is focused toward God alone in this psalm.
I know that sounds obvious for Christians and perhaps you don’t need to be reminded to offer thanks to God for all you have. The problem is that all too often we misdirect out thanks. An example: how about when we write someone a thank you note for some kindness or a gift. Do you thank the person but fail to add something like, “I am so thankful that God put you in my life” or some other acknowledgment of your faith and God’s hand on your life? If you offer thanks to any person and leave god out of the praise then the focus in not God ward.
It is easy to misdirect and stop short of focusing and witnessing our praise to others.
-- The third element of thanks giving that David demonstrates is to be specific. If David prayed like we tend to pray this could be a very short psalm.
When we offer general prayers like, “God we thank you for all our blessings” we are being lazy and empty minded. We are loosing our sincerity and are being only half hearted and selfish. Because we are trying to get past the formalities and get to what we need and want from God.
When we offer general thanks to God, we are failing to recognize the specific actions of God in our lives.
David prays very specifically - forgiveness of sins, healing, deliverance, mercy, food, protecting people , speaking through Moses. Shortness of God’s anger….
It goes on and on. He took time to reflect and identify specific acts of God. He wasn’t just thankful for the personal blessings and his personal benefits.
He includes one tricky phrase in verse 2
Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits:
Does he mean that we are to remember everything, absolutely everything?
….or don’t forget all of them….?
We can’t really offer thanks for everything because we are limited on knowing every blessing. So, it seems that David suggest that we need to be specific so that we don’t forget all of them by stating them in your thanks.
I have learned over the years that for me to remember the details of an event I need to keep notes. Sometimes physical on paper and sometimes a mental note is enough. The difference is when I need to keep up with a lot of things.
It is the common everyday things, the little blessings that tend to be forgotten the easiest. Like 50 weeks of good health compared to a few days of sickness.
-- Next, I believe that David demonstrates that giving thanks is something we do with planning and purpose.
Some view giving of thanks to God as being like tipping as server in a restaurant.
Most of us view tips as varying in amount, based on service and satisfaction. Tipping is often based on emotions such as happiness or disappointment.
When Renee and I were newly married, we took off on a vacation down to Florida and spent a couple of days at Disney world. This was in the PK days. (Pre-Kid) We went an camped in a pickup camper with NO AC.
I can’t believe how much Renee lived me when I think back over the years.
We decided to splurge and made reservations to have dinner in Cinderella’s castle. The reservation was fairly late in the evening. As I mentioned, we had no children at the time so I t was not a big deal.
To hit the high lights, things went badly. They seated us later than expected and when they did we were stuffed into a back corner almost into the server work area. We noticed that all these other people had those neat little loves of bread and butter as their meals were prepared. We had water and when we finally got a waiter to talk to us it took forever for him to bring a basket of bread… When we pulled back the napkin we were a bit surprised. Instead of the fresh baked loaf we received normal sandwich bread. The meal was small and cold and the server was rude and I my attitude went form tired to something below bad mood.
When it came time to pay the bill I paid in cash and the tip amounted to 4 cents. Renee was mortified.
Sometimes we offer thanks to God in a similar way. It is easy to offer our thanks to God when our “cup runnth over.” When things are going well, our health is good. The job is going fine. We find it easy to offer thanks and praise.
When we feel blessed, is that the only time we thank the Lord? I know that we tend to pray more often when times are harder for us and our families.
It is easy to ask for healing and blessing and mercy…but do we remember to give thanks when things are not so hot?
Do we offer thanks like the tips we offer to a person that serves us?
Do we really believe that God has removed every blessing and we have nothing to be thankful for?
Do we offer thanks based on how we feel? As if God has removed every blessing our lives.
It is hard to be thankful when times are tough. I have said that we should not offer thanks as lip services, or just automatic response or out of simple holy courtesy.
So how do we get back to proper focus and sincerity, and specifics…?
The way David seems to be doing it. Who is David speaking to in this psalm….God or himself….
David is talking to himself, he is encouraging his soul and examining his blessings. He is nudging his heart mind and soul to offer proper thanks to God.
He encourages himself to thank God regularly in a disciplined matter. He has planned his prayer of thanks giving by making a specific detailed list.
Folks we are approaching a day when our nation will give thanks in some way. Most families will celebrate thanks feeling instead of thanksgiving.
Unfortunately too many households will only offer thanks to one another with little or know genuine acknowledgement to God. As a result their celebration will only last of a day or a week or until the left-overs run out and will be quickly forgotten. As the world offers new challenges and problems.
Because instead of feeling thankful every day they will be limited by their self-focus to ignore that there is a God that blesses all of creation.
True Thanks giving is offered to God, it is Sincere, specific and purposeful.
May God forgive us for our ingratitude and renew within us the hear to true thanksgiving toward him.
May we all make every attempt to keep this thanksgiving with our inner most being
All Glory be to God!
5 kernels communion
Story of kernels -
