Thanks To God At Thanksgiving Series

Turn your Bibles to Psalm 100:1-5

Title: Thanks to God at Thanksgiving

Theme: Biblical Expressions of Thanksgiving

Series: Full Measure of Thanksgiving

Listen as I read Psalm 100:1-5, “Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth. Worship the LORD with gladness; come before Him with joyful songs. Know that the LORD is God. It is He who made us, and we are His; we are His people, the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and praise His name. For the LORD is good and His love endures forever; His faithfulness continues through all generations.” Pray!

Introduction: This week we are celebrating Thanksgiving and the Holy Spirit is guiding us through the Word of God to direct our thoughts, spiritual hearts and lives toward Biblical expressions of thanksgiving to the Lord.

Because of the strength of the flesh and the powerful draw of the world, Christians are wearied by thoughts of preparing food, travel, eating, entertaining, talking with family, watching football with friends and many other things. Honestly, for many, Thanksgiving is opening day for depression and for most it is opening season of an unfulfilled life.

Proposition: I would propose to you that the Lord in His great wisdom and love has prepared this Sunday, the Sunday before Thanksgiving to be an opportunity for us to offer Biblical expressions of thanksgiving unto Him! Considering how the people of God are a temple of the Holy Spirit of Christ, they have every opportunity to abound in singing, praying, giving and sharing testimony of God’s faithfulness in Christ Jesus.

A life that expresses these four truths is like incense in the temple, fragrances that are pleasing to God and to the Body of Christ. Sacrifices ended when Christ died upon the Cross, however, gratitude for the Lord’s sacrifice should not. (The Treasury of David; Spurgeon) It is His mercy and grace that enable us to enter into His Throne room and it is because of the shed blood of Christ we are able to enjoy God as “Abba,” our loving Father. (Romans 8:15)

Interrogative Sentence: Just how can we live out these four truths of Biblical expression in our endeavor to please the Lord?

Transitional Sentence: The first truth to enjoy in thanksgiving worship is Holy Spirit illumination of singing to the Lord. Psalm 147:7 says, “Sing to the LORD with thanksgiving; make music to our God on the harp.” David, a man after God’s heart (Acts 13:22) wrote, “I will be glad and rejoice in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High. (Psalm 9:2) The Holy Spirit moved through David, the great song writer, to set the heartbeat of our worship, “I will give thanks to the LORD because of His righteousness and will sing praise to the name of the LORD Most High.” (Psalm 7:17)

Singing about and to the Lord is not just an Old Testament commandment, but a New Testament exhortation. Romans 15:9-11 says, "’Therefore, I will praise you among the Gentiles; I will sing hymns to your name.’" Again, it says, ‘Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people.’ And again, ‘Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and sing praises to Him, all you peoples." Ephesians 5:19 – 20 says, “Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Satan is very successful in disrupting the song service. He amazingly is able to cause people to focus on themselves as they approach the song service or even in their private time of listening to music. Some complain about how long or how short the song service is, they complain about the hymns, the choruses, the style, the instruments and set their mind to just tolerate the song service and not participate in spirit and truth. In their private time. Satan has convinced many that it is permissible to fill their ears with secular music, thus robbing the people of God of singing praises to the Lord and missing out on sensing His pleasure in their lives and in their corporate song services.

The Body of Christ cannot give if they do not have. The song service is a reflection of the worship in singing about and to the Lord throughout the week. Anyone can work diligently to put together a song service. It is the song leader who has enjoyed worship unto the Lord with those songs who will enjoy the Holy Spirit’s enabling for people to be aware of God’s presence.

Rick Warren wrote, “Christianity is a singing faith. There are more songs about Jesus Christ than anything else, even more than love. There are more songs about Jesus written throughout history than any other single topic. So you need to learn to sing your thanks to God, give it back to God in joyful praise.”