Thanksgiving 2025

Thanksgiving 2025

Text: Luke 22:39-46

On Thursday we celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday, and I love Thanksgiving…

I love that it’s right before the Advent Season, because it helps us order our hearts towards Jesus. We should be thankful people – always, but especially as we approach Advent.

Now I say, “We should be thankful…” but let’s be honest, sometimes its not always easy right?

If you look around at the world today, and you have any knowledge about world events today, you’ll actually be tempted to give up and become discouraged. Looking at the things around us can lead you to feel overwhelmed. But in one very real sense, we should even be thankful for that. Because what takes place during those times is like a test. It’s when the knowledge you have in your head is actually put to the test in real life. Those hard times, and dark times are the tests that show us whether our faith is superficial or if its genuine. And it’s not that the trials and hardships aren’t real – it’s our reaction to them that shows us the genuineness of our faith.

David went through those tests… Psalm 55:4-8 is a good example of that. Let me just read it to you, “My heart is in anguish within me; the terrors of death have fallen upon me, and horror overwhelms me. And I say, ‘Oh that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest; yes, I would wander far away; I would lodge in the wilderness; I would hurry to find a shelter from the raging wind and tempest.”

Have you ever been there? You want to just fly away and get some peace and quiet and rest.

“Calgon take me away!”

How can we be thankful in times like that?

Well let’s go to our text this morning – it’s in Luke 22:39-46, and we’ll see how Jesus handles a time like this, and I think it will help us be thankful as we see what the Lord has done. (READ TEXT).

So Jesus is under extreme pressure – He knows what’s coming… and soon enough, His disciples will also feel intense pressure – for three years they’ve followed Him, and now they’re going to be tested. They’re going to fail, but Jesus doesn’t. He doesn’t fail. And so what we see in the betrayal, the prayer of Jesus in the garden, the arrest and trial and eventual execution of Jesus, is a huge contrast between Jesus and His disciples… They fail – just like us – we fail from time to time… but Jesus doesn’t.

So, look again at verse 39… Jesus went out to the Mount of Olives and Luke tells us something really important here – THIS WAS HIS CUTSOM! It’s a small, but important detail. The end result of this moment in Jesus’ life – His submission to the Father – was built on a lifetime of consistent, habitual communion with the Father. All through the Gospels we see Jesus draw away and get alone with the Father. He was given to prayer.

Church understand this – when the trials and tests come, we won’t suddenly develop a new spiritual discipline – we will default to the ones we’ve already cultivated. I go over this same sort of thing when I do active shooter trainings – you don’t all of a sudden transform into Bruce Willis in Die Hard – you default to the level of training you’ve put into application… not even the level you’ve received, but to the level you’ve put into application.

In-fact; that’s why the Great Commission is worded the way it is… Jesus says, “Go into all the world and MAKE DISCIPLES – teaching them to OBSERVE all that I have commanded you.” We must share the Gospel – but it doesn’t stop there – you’ve got to get plugged in to Church, you’ve got to make those spiritual disciplines your custom. Amen!

So Jesus goes out and He prays – as was His custom… and look at how He prays, and what He says, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me…”

Now some people are thinking that Jesus is saying that He doesn’t want to endure the physical pain of being nailed to the cross, and the emotional pain of being publicly mocked.

But that’s not really what this request is.

Throughout the Bible, the “cup” is a symbol of God’s holy wrath against sin. Psalm 75:8, “For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup with foaming wine, well mixed, and He pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs.”

Isaiah 51:17, “Wake yourself, wake yourself, stand up, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the Lord, the cup of His wrath, who have drunk to the dregs the bowl, the cup of staggering.”