Thanksgiving

Psalm 100- Thanksgiving - November 24, 2011 

  O Give Thanks unto the Lord, for He is Good

Last Sunday was the Last Sunday of the Church Year.  Next Sunday is the First Sunday in Advent, which marks the beginning of the Church Year.  Today is Thanksgiving Day.  But you won’t find this day in the liturgical calendar, because Thanksgiving is not a Church holiday.  It’s a national holiday invented by Americans.  Of all national holidays this is the most appropriate one for us to celebrate in church.  After all, God commands us to give Him thanks every day for all that He has done for us.  GOD TEACHES US HOW TO THANK HIM BY TEACHING US WHAT HE HAS DONE. 

Have you noticed that when we speak or chant a Psalm in church, we always conclude by giving glory to the Triune God, saying, Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever, Amen?  The reason we do this is to show that when the Old Testament speaks about God or the LORD, it is speaking about the same God that we worship today.  The Holy Trinity is not an innovation of the New Testament Church.  It is what Scripture teaches from start to finish.  It’s not possible to worship the true God without also confessing Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  

God doesn’t do anything for which we ought to thank Him apart from doing it as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  In the beginning, for instance, God created the heavens and the earth.  We tend to think of this task as belonging to God the Father alone, but the Son and the Holy Spirit were of course also present.  The Father created everything that exists by speaking the very Word that would later take on human flesh and blood and redeem mankind.  And even as the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the deep on that first day of creation, so also the Holy Spirit continues to work through everything that the Father accomplishes by His Son Jesus Christ. 

Even in the first few verses of Genesis, we can see that the work of God is always Trinitarian.  As Psalm 33 confirms, “By the Word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all the stars by the Breath/Spirit of His mouth.”  When God speaks, the Son obeys His Father’s will, and the Holy Spirit is always there working through the eternal Word. 

So it was also in God’s plan to save our fallen race.  Just as the work of creation was the work of the whole Trinity, so also was the work of our redemption.  Out of love for us, the Father sent His Son to be born of a woman, conceived by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary.  Jesus was born under the law to redeem us whom the law condemned.  By shedding His innocent blood in our place He reconciled us to the Father.  Today, the work of our sanctification is also the work of the whole Trinity.  Because when the Holy Spirit works faith in our hearts through the word and sacraments, He delivers to us nothing less than the peace that the Son has established between His Father and all sinners. 

GOD TEACHES US HOW TO THANK HIM BY TEACHING US WHAT HE HAS DONE.  Today is Thanksgiving.  In order to thank God as we ought to, we need to know who God is and what He has done for us.  And we do.  That is why today we Christians reflect upon all those material blessings that God has given us.  “[For] He daily and richly provides us with all that we need to support this body and life.” 

And we sure are blessed.  We have feasts waiting for us at our homes.  We have family and friends who will join us in our celebrations.  Our health, our wealth, our children and all of our joys come to us from our heavenly Father who loves us.  “All this He does only out of fatherly divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in us.” 

This is not a nameless higher power who gives us these things.  It is the one true God whom we know by name: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  We are taught that, for all these wonderful gifts, “it is our duty to thank and praise, serve and obey Him. This is most certainly true.”  By teaching us about Jesus, the Holy Spirit teaches us how to do this.  When we thank the God who made us and preserves our life, who gives us all sorts of good things, we are also thanking the God who has redeemed us with His own blood, and we are thanking the God who has worked faith in our hearts to trust and know Him.  We are thanking the Holy Trinity. 

Despite what has become a very long introduction, let us still briefly consider these words from Psalm 100, through which the Holy Spirit teaches us how to thank our God:

Make a joyful shout to the LORD, all you lands!
Serve the LORD with gladness;

Come before His presence with singing.
Know that the LORD, He is God;

It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves;
We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.

Enter into His gates with thanksgiving,
And into His courts with praise.

Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.
For the LORD is good;

His mercy is everlasting,
And His truth endures to all generations.

These are Your words, holy Father. Sanctify us by Your truth. Your word is truth. Amen. 

Our country is especially prosperous and blessed with material wealth.  Throughout history, God has been especially generous to those who have received His word with thanksgiving.  God’s earthly blessings follow His spiritual blessings.  But we don’t put the cart before the horse.  We don’t determine God’s favor toward us based on how much stuff we have.  Instead, we do what this Psalm instructs all nations to do; we thank and praise, serve and obey the God who gives all good things.  And we do so with gladness because we know Jesus for whose sake we receive it all.   

We don’t deserve what we have.  We abuse what we have.  We take for granted what we have.  We use what God has given us to fulfill our own selfish desires even while we neglect the needs and wants of those around us.  We use our bodies as though they belonged to us.  But they don’t.  It is not we who have made ourselves.  It is God.  And so it is also God who will judge us, and who demands that we present ourselves as righteous before Him if we are to escape the punishment that our sins have merited. 

But thanks be to God!  Jesus did not sin.  He received everything He had with thanksgiving to His Father – even when He didn’t have so much as a place to lay His head.  Jesus made use of every hour, every breath, every good thing that God gave Him in service to His neighbor whom He loved.  Jesus merited eternal life – but not for Himself.  He assumed the very flesh and blood that He created in order to serve His own creation.   And Jesus took the sin and guilt of all mankind upon Himself, as He suffered the full punishment that we deserved.  Jesus died for those who lived for themselves. 

Therefore, “Come before His presence with singing,” the Psalm says.  And so we do.  We come having repented of the sins that grieve us, and so we are clothed by faith in the blood of Jesus that makes us worthy to stand before God.  This is why the songs and hymns that we sing in church clearly confess Jesus, not only for who He is, but also for what He has done to save us from our sin.  Jesus teaches us how to thank our God. 

St. Paul writes, “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”  We come before the presence of God singing and rejoicing in Jesus who has reconciled us to Himself and made peace.  When we sing the Gospel, we make use of the access to God’s grace in which we stand.  There is no better way to give thanks to God for everything He gives us than by proclaiming what Jesus has done for us on the cross.  Indeed, we cannot give thanks to God apart from this. 

GOD TEACHES US HOW TO THANK HIM BY TEACHING US WHAT HE HAS DONE.  And so God directs us through the preaching of the Gospel to the waters of Holy Baptism where He forgave us all our sins, and placed His own Triune name upon us: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  This is how He claimed us as His people and made us the sheep of His pasture as this Psalm says.  And so as sheep who delight in the voice of their Good Shepherd, we also gladly hear the word of God.  This is what it means to enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. 

Our Psalm concludes, “Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.”  By teaching us His Triune name, God teaches us what He has done to save us.  “The LORD is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations.”  The life of a Christian is one of constant thanksgiving.  This is simply because a Christian knows who to thank.  And we know for whose sake we receive it all.  That is why today on Thanksgiving Day we come here to learn about Jesus, even as we look forward to all the earthly blessings that our faithful Father has blessed us with besides. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.