Introduction:
A. I hope everyone had a very happy Thanksgiving Day.
1. Of all the American made holidays, Thanksgiving is perhaps the most spiritually oriented.
2. But did you know that having an attitude of gratitude is something that God commands?
3. 1 Thessalonians 5:15-18 says: “Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in everything; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
B. To get us thinking about thankfulness and gratitude, let’s look at a couple of Peanuts cartoons.
1. Here we see Snoopy looking at his dinner bowl on Thanksgiving Day.
2. “How about that?” he asks himself.
3. He says to himself, “Everyone is eating turkey today, but just because I’m a dog, I get dog food.”
4. But then he realizes, “Of course, it might have been worse…I could have been born a turkey!”
C. Brothers and sisters, whenever we begin to think that life is unfair we need to think again.
1. Whatever our situation is, we must remember that things could always be worse and that there are always things for which we can give thanks if we just stop and think about it.
2. We can thank God that we’re alive!
3. We can thank God that He is good and that His loves endures forever.
4. We can thank God that He is faithful to us even during the times when we aren’t noticing.
D. Here’s a second Peanuts cartoon.
1. Charlie Brown brings Snoopy his dinner bowl and says, “Here you are Snoopy…Happy Thanksgiving!”
2. Snoopy says, “Thank you.”
3. But then Snoopy looks at the contents of the dinner bowl and say, “No cranberries?”
E. How often do we experience ingratitude?
1. The Thanksgiving meal is laid out in front of us and has all kinds of delicious choices, but then we notice that something is missing.
2. What, no cranberries? No green bean casserole? No pumpkin pie?
3. Rather than being thankful for what we have before us, we focus on what is missing.
4. I’m sure that none of us have ever acted like Snoopy!!
I. An Example of Gratitude
A. Let’s turn to 1 Samuel 31 and learn from a story where gratitude is on display.
1. You might remember that for a long time there was no king in Israel, rather they were led by judges.
2. Finally they got their long-sought after king, and the prophet Samuel anointed Saul, a young man from the tribe of Benjamin.
a. Saul's story began with such promise, but unfortunately Saul’s story ended with tragedy.
b. Somewhere along the way, King Saul lost his dependence on God.
c. Saul engaged in disobedience to God’s will, and eventually lost his mental stability because of an insane jealousy of the young warrior David.
d. Then, in Saul’s final battle with the Philistines, he lost his life in a horrible defeat.
3. The Philistines were both wicked AND cruel.
a. It was not enough for them to defeat their enemies, they invariably wanted to humiliate them, even in death.
b. And so the day after they defeated King Saul and his army we read about these actions: The next day when the Philistines came to strip the slain, they found Saul and his three sons dead on Mount Gilboa. They cut off Saul’s head, stripped off his armor, and sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines to spread the good news in the temples of their idols and among the people. Then they put his armor in the temple of the Ashtoreths and hung his body on the wall of Beth-shan. (1 Sam. 31:8-10)
c. The body of the man who had once been God's anointed, who had once ruled all the tribes of Israel, was now subjected to the ultimate indignity of a public humiliation.
d. Thus ended the reign of the first king of Israel, and the end of his reign can be described by these words: deranged, defeated, dead, decapitated, displayed, and disgraced.
4. But there is one note of grace in this sad spectacle that we often overlook: it is the response of the men of Jabesh-Gilead!
a. The Bible says: When the residents of Jabesh-gilead heard what the Philistines had done to Saul, all their brave men set out, journeyed all night, and retrieved the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Beth-shan. When they arrived at Jabesh, they burned the bodies there. Afterward, they took their bones and buried them under the tamarisk tree in Jabesh and fasted seven days. (1 Sam. 31:11-13).
b. To truly understand the significance of what they had done and the gratitude they showed, you need to know, as Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story.”
c. You have to go back to the very beginning of King Saul’s reign.
B. When Samuel anointed Saul the first king of Israel in 1 Samuel 10, not everyone was thrilled with their new king.
1. The Bible says in 1 Sam. 10:27: But some wicked men said, “How can this guy save us?” They despised him and did not bring him a gift, but Saul said nothing.
a. Perhaps some of those men who despised Saul were from Jabesh-gilead.
2. For the very next verse begins 1 Samuel 11, and we are told that Nahash the Ammonite came and laid siege to Jabesh-gilead, and the men sought to make a treaty with him.
3. But the cost of peace with the Ammonites would be high, all the men of Jabesh-gilead would have to submit to having their right eye gouged out.
a. This would not only be a painful and humiliating thing to experience, it would also render them defenseless in combat, since the shield was carried in the left hand.
4. The men of Jabesh-gilead asked for 7 days to see if anyone from the rest of the nation of Israel would come to their rescue.
a. So they sent out messengers asking for help.
5. The Bible says that when King Saul heard what the messengers were saying, the Spirit of God suddenly came powerfully on him and his anger burned furiously.
a. Saul sent out a message to Israel to round up troops to defend the men of Jabesh-gilead.
b. Guess how many men came forward to stand behind Saul? Three hundred thirty thousand.
c. King Saul told the messengers who had come, “Tell this to the men of Jabesh-gilead: ‘Deliverance will be yours tomorrow by the time the sun is hot.’ ”
d. So the messengers told the men of Jabesh-gilead, and they rejoiced.
6. The long and short of it is that King Saul and his army defeated the Ammonites and rescued the men of Jabesh-gilead.
7. After that great victory, men came to the prophet Samuel and said, “Who said that Saul should not reign over us? Give us those men so we can kill them!”
a. But King Saul heard about it and ordered, “No one will be executed this day, for today the Lord has provided deliverance in Israel.” (1 Sam. 11:13)
C. Can you imagine how grateful all the people of Jabesh-gilead were to King Saul and all the men who came and defended them
1. And now that we know the background, then we can better appreciate the motivation of the men of Jabesh-Gilead: they were acting out of gratitude!
2. Saul had come to their rescue and so the least they could do was give Saul a proper burial.
3. The action of the men of Jabesh-Gilead is so remarkable because genuine gratitude is, unfortunately, so rare.
4. One of the few times we see even Jesus was astonished by human nature is when there was an expression of both gratitude and ingratitude.
a. Do you remember the time when Jesus healed the 10 lepers? (Luke 17:11-19)
b. Leprosy was a terrible disease, not only because of what it did physically, but also what it did socially – lepers were cast out of the community to keep the disease from spreading.
c. So to be healed from leprosy not only restored someone’s health, but also restored their relationships, and ultimately gave them back their normal life.
d. So imagine how grateful those 10 lepers must have been after Jesus had healed them.
e. Yet, after being healed, how many of them sought out Jesus to say thank you? Only one!
f. Jesus said with astonishment to the one who returned to express his gratitude: “Were not ten healed? Where are the other nine?” (Luke 17:19)
D. Unfortunately, the experience of Jesus is sadly true to life.
1. Here’s a great historical example.
2. One stormy night on Lake Michigan, back in 1860, a side-wheeler steamboat collided with a lumber schooner.
3. It was a terrible tragedy: 279 people lost their lives as the steamboat sank about a mile offshore of Winnetka, Illinois.
4. Even more would have died, however, were it not for the heroic efforts of Edward Spencer, a student at Northwestern University.
5. When he realized what had happened Spencer jumped into the freezing waters of Lake Michigan and swam out to the drowning passengers.
6. He towed one to shore and then immediately went back for another.
7. Single-handedly Edward Spencer rescued seventeen people that night.
8. But he paid a high price for his efforts, because the strain of that experience destroyed his health, and he was eventually confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
9. On his 80th birthday an interviewer asked him what was his most vivid memory of that fateful day and he replied, “Not one of the seventeen ever returned to thank me.”
E. Consider why the gratitude of the men of Jabesh-gilead was so remarkable.
1. First of all, their expression of gratitude reveals that they had not forgotten.
a. It had been 40 years since their deliverance by Saul, but they hadn’t forgotten what he had done for them.
b. For some reason it is so easy for us to forget what we should be thankful for and to express our thanks!
c. Tom Peters is one of the top business consultants in the world - he has written several best-selling books, is paid many thousands of dollars by corporations to make speeches, and has a newspaper column.
d. In his book titled “The Pursuit of Wow!”, he has a section that he calls “the most important piece of advice in this book.”
e. Can you guess what is the most profound management insight that this highly-respected consultant gives in that section? “Don’t forget your thank-you notes!”
2. Second, their expression of gratitude was so remarkable because it had no self-serving motive involved.
a. The men of Jabesh-gilead had nothing to gain from their actions.
b. Because they did it for Saul and he was dead, it didn’t involve flattery, they weren’t “buttering him up” or manipulating him.
c. There certainly was no way that Saul could repay them in the future.
d. Their action was totally unselfish and that is a mark of genuine gratitude.
F. But allow me to offer this one caveat – unfortunately, the men of Jabesh-gilead waited until after Saul was dead to perform this expression of gratitude.
1. Perhaps the men of Jabesh-gilead had expressed their appreciation years before at the time of their rescue.
2. Perhaps this gesture of gratitude was on top of all they had already expressed.
3. But how sad it is when we wait too long to express our gratitude.
4. Nancy Dickerson was a news reporter back in the early '60's, when Eleanor Roosevelt died.
a. The day after the former first lady's death, Dickerson read a letter she had written the day before Roosevelt died.
b. It was a letter of thanks she had intended to send Mrs. Roosevelt to express her gratitude, but Eleanor Roosevelt died before the letter reached her.
5. Here’s an interesting and enlightening poem:
If with pleasure you are viewing, Any work a man is doing;
If you like him or you love him, tell him now.
Don't withhold your approbation, Till the parson makes oration,
And he lies with snowy lilies o'er his brow.
If he earns your praise, bestow it. If you like him, let him know it.
Let the word of true encouragement be said;
Do not wait till life is over, And he's underneath the clover,
For he can't read the tombstone when he's dead.
II. How to Develop an Attitude of Gratitude
A. So how can we develop an attitude of gratitude?
1. If you don’t remember anything else I say today, I want to encourage you to listen closely and remember this: Thankfulness arises in a heart that has been touched with the reality of God’s generosity and grace.
2. And when it comes to appreciating and appropriately responding to God’s generosity and grace, there are two things we must work on.
B. First, We must understand that thinking precedes thanking.
1. Thanksgiving is the product of careful reflection on who God is and what God has done.
2. If we will think long and hard enough about God, we will find something to be thankful for.
a. If you or I can’t think of something to be thankful for, then we have not thought long and hard enough.
3. Someone once said, “The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.”
a. There are so many good things in my life for which I am thankful. How about you?
b. If we are not careful, it is easy to take these blessings for granted.
c. If there has been a time when we didn’t have any of these blessings, then it might be easier to remember them and be thankful for them.
4. But even in the midst of our most difficult circumstances, if we will think long and hard enough, we will be able to find something for which to be thankful.
a. Matthew Henry, the famous Bible scholar, had his wallet stolen by robbers one day.
1. If you have ever been robbed you know how scary and unsettling that can be.
2. Nevertheless, listen to what Matthew Henry wrote in his journal: “Let me be thankful first, because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse, they did not 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.”
b. Helen Keller, who was blind and deaf, spoke glowingly of thanksgiving, she said: “For three things I thank God every day of my life: thanks that He has vouchsafed me knowledge of His works; deep thanks that He has set in my darkness the lamp of faith; deep, deepest thanks that I have another life to look forward – a life joyous with light and flowers and heavenly song.”
c. Those are some powerful examples of giving thanks in all circumstances!
5. The Scriptures are clear about the potential positive effects of our trials.
a. Like James 1:2-4: Count it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
b. Trials don’t automatically produce good outcomes, they have to be faced with the right attitude and with God’s strength in order for them to bring a positive result.
c. When we face our trails with faith, and look for God’s blessings in the midst of them, then we can be thankful in all circumstances.
6. So, first we must realize that thinking precedes thanking.
C. Second, We must understand that pride prevents gratitude.
1. Henry Ward Beecher wrote: “A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.”
2. A humble person recognizes two things the proud person cannot accept.
a. First, the humble person understands that who they are and what they have has come from God as a gift and a blessing.
b. Second, the humble person realizes they have received far more than they deserve which helps with contentment.
D. Therefore, if we are going to be more thankful and have an attitude of gratitude, it begins with these two things: mindfulness and humility.
1. First, with mindfulness, we count our blessings, even the ones that come during our trials.
2. Second, with humility we recognize that everything comes from God and that because of God’s grace, we have received from God far more than we deserve.
E. Our God is a wonderful, gracious God who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
1. God’s commands for us include the command “be thankful always,” because God knows how damaging ungratefulness can be.
2. Is there ever a time when our need to be grateful or our need to express our gratitude runs out?
3. Certainly not when the thing we should be thankful for is something as significant as Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.
4. Out of appreciation to Christ, we are called to live the rest of our lives for Him.
F. We began with Peanuts cartoons so let’s end with another one.
1. One day Lucy was down in the dumps and Linus, her brothers asked her: “What’s the matter?”
2. Lucy said: “My life is a drag…I’m completely fed up…I’ve never been so low in all my life...”
3. Linus tried to cheer Lucy up by saying, “When you’re in a mood like this you should think of the things you have to be thankful for…in other words, count your blessings.”
4. Lucy replied, “HA! That’s a good one! I could count my blessings on one finger! I’ve never had anything, and I never will have anything!”
5. Lucy said: “I don’t get half the breaks that other people do…Nothing ever goes right for me!”
6. And Lucy went on with her rant: “And you talk about counting my blessings! You talk about being thankful! What do I have to be thankful for?”
7. Linus replied, “Well, for one thing, you have a little brother who loves you!”
8. Lucy then began to cry, “WAAH!” and embraced Linus, who thought to himself: “Every now and then I say the right thing.”
9. There’s always something to be thankful for if we look for it.
G. Thankgiving is a great day in life, but thanksliving is a great way of life!
1. Developing an attitude of gratitude will bring blessings to us and to everyone around us.
H. Are you thankful for what God has done for us through Jesus?
1. How are you expressing your gratitude for God’s gift?
2. The best way to show our gratitude is to live our lives for Jesus who gave His life for us.
3. If you have not yet accepted the gift of God’s grace through Jesus, then we would love to help you confess your faith in Jesus, to repent and be baptized into Christ.
4. If you need to respond to the invitation of God today, then come while we stand and sing.
Resources:
Thanksliving, Sermon by David Owens
Gratitude, Sermon by Dan Williams
