Amid turkey and pie and football, we can list what we’re thankful for and still miss the point. Psalm 95 won’t let us settle for vague gratitude; it calls us to sing to the Lord and come into His presence with thanksgiving to the rock of our salvation.

Study Questions

The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.

The sermon contrasts vague gratitude (“thank you for all the blessings”) with specific thanksgiving. When you pray or give thanks, how often do you name particular gifts God has given you? What changes when gratitude becomes concrete rather than general?
Tim describes how internal distractions—worry, hunger, excitement—interrupt even intentional prayers of thanksgiving. What “notifications” most commonly pull your heart away from praise, and how might naming them help you refocus on the Lord?
The sermon argues that biblical thanksgiving must lead to obedience and action. How do everyday distractions and a hardened heart get in the way of that movement, and what would your week look like if you treated gratitude as a call to bless others rather than simply a feeling to express?
Tim illustrates giving as a form of obedience that multiplies thanksgiving in the world, as described in 2 Corinthians 9. When you give to the church or help someone in need, how aware are you that you’re pointing them toward God’s generosity rather than your own?
As you move from Thanksgiving into Advent, the sermon challenges listeners to invite others to experience God’s goodness. What makes invitation difficult for you, and how might genuine thanksgiving make it feel less like obligation and more like joy?

Transcript

This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.

With that, let’s go ahead and prepare our hearts to hear from God’s Word.

So tonight, we are turning to Psalm 95, a good place to go for Thanksgiving week, taking a little time off from our series. Actually, we’re taking about six weeks off from our series because the series that we’ve been doing, “Take Two Tablets,” will come back in January as we continue to explore the Ten Commandments. But we are going to focus on Thanksgiving this week, and then I’ll be talking in just a little bit about a brand new series for Advent that I know you won’t want to miss come next week.

Can you believe Advent already? Here we are at the end of the year. A lot to reflect on, a lot to be thankful for. And one of those things is Thanksgiving itself. Who’s excited about Thanksgiving? Anyone excited about Thanksgiving? Yeah, so there are all kinds of reasons why we look forward to Thanksgiving. We’re thankful for Thanksgiving. Sometimes it’s for the turkey. Who’s on Team Turkey here? Anyone on Team Turkey? Yeah, we have some Team Turkey folks.

How about, and of course, if you’re online, put this in the chat too, are you the side dish person? Are you excited about the sides? Yeah, sides, you have potatoes? Yeah, they have to have potatoes. I was just saying earlier, you hear about all these trendy diets going around. They need to come up with one that’s all carbs because that would be a good one, right? But yes, we have to have the potatoes.

And then how about the dessert? Yeah, I mean, pumpkin pie is where it’s at, right? I don’t care if you have anything else, just bring on the pumpkin pie. I’m sorry? Apple pie? Yeah, we did have apple pie in the video, didn’t we? Chocolate? Chocolate pie is my true weakness, but on Thanksgiving, it’s got to be pumpkin pie with lots of whipped cream. It just has to be. There’s just no way around it. Maybe sweet potato pie, but really pumpkin. Sweet potato? Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s pretty good.

Now, how about football? Anyone ready for Thanksgiving Day football? Well, you know, maybe. Okay, I figured someone was; that was the big highlight that you were looking forward to. I mean, I agree with most of you, it sounds like. I mean, sports ended when the World Series ended for the year. I mean, it’s over until next spring.

Lots of essential things to complete Thanksgiving though, right? Then you have to have the gatherings. I mean, we get together, we celebrate, maybe we celebrate for days. Oh, and then maybe the late Thanksgiving night, early the next morning shopping, right? Black Friday is coming up. Yeah, Amazon’s already counting down. You can already get deals right now because Thanksgiving week is all about finding things to buy, right?

So here’s all the essentials of Thanksgiving. Now, have I not left something out of all that though? Thankfulness. Yeah, thankfulness.

Now, sometimes we realize that and say, okay, so people get together, we’re going to have our Thanksgiving meal, and let’s talk about what we are thankful for, right? And so we list off some things. I actually thought about doing that tonight. We’re not going to do an open mic, but maybe one of these days we should. That’s kind of a nice thing to do on Thanksgiving week to just pass around on the mic and talk about what we’re thankful for.

But as I was thinking about that, I thought about all kinds of wonderful things we might mention, right? We mentioned family and friends. I know I’m thankful for all of you and for our church. We could list out all these wonderful things that God has blessed us with. The key thing that often gets forgotten when we hear in our culture what we’re talking about just now is that those last words: “God has blessed us with,” because we can hear a lot of people talking about, “I’m going to talk about what I’m thankful for on Thanksgiving.”

And maybe it’s good that we just take a step back and do reflect on what we have and how we’re grateful for it, but if we do that and we don’t move to the one who’s given it to us, we’re missing out on what biblical Thanksgiving really looks like. Because it’s not enough to say, “I am so thankful for my family and for my friends and for this pumpkin pie in front of me.”

We need to make sure that we’re thanking the God who gave us that pumpkin pie and those family and those friends—not necessarily in that order. You need to start by praising God. And if you look at Thanksgiving in the Bible, it always comes first and foremost to thanking God. Yes, the things are going to be listed, the different blessings are going to be listed, and we’re going to talk in a moment about how that’s important.

But what’s important is that we are thanking Him for those things, not just thanking vaguely, generally someone or something or the force of the universe for blessing. Let’s take a look at Psalm 95. If you want to turn there with me, look at verses one and two to start. Listen to what the psalmist says:

“Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come into His presence with thanksgiving. Let us make a joyful noise to Him with songs of praise.”

That’s our calling as Christians, that we would make songs of praise as we enter into His presence with Thanksgiving. So let’s pray that God would help us to have that sort of thankful heart this very day. Will you pray with me, please?

Father, please help us as we study Your word to see those places where we’re missing out on being thankful, or we’re busy being thankful but not really remembering to attribute that to You. And Lord, as we respond in Thanksgiving, would You help us to move to lives that are thankful, that have an outflowing out of that Thanksgiving? We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.

So this is the… Who? Question: You always ask questions like this, right? Who should we be thankful to? Well, we should be thankful to God. We should offer praise to God, and this seems like it’s sort of, “Well, of course, Tim. We’re sitting here in church. We’re talking about Thanksgiving.” But I thought, how many times, even for those of us who are Christians, do we turn Thanksgiving more into, “I’m going to tell the people around me how I’m thankful for them.” And I don’t want to diminish that in a sense. It’s a good thing if you go to Thanksgiving dinner and you’re sitting there and you say, “I am so thankful for those of you around this table.”

Maybe this year, many of us have experienced some loss, and you realize who isn’t at that table, and it makes you think all the more about how you are thankful for those who are around that table. And if that’s the case, again, I don’t want to throw a bucket of water on that and say, “Don’t be thankful to the people around you.” But I do think, especially in a secular culture as we celebrate Thanksgiving, a lot of times that is full stop what we’re doing. Well, it’s a day for me to be thankful to the people around me or to reflect on what I have.

Sort of interesting: churches, a lot of churches used to have a Thanksgiving Day service. Anyone grow up at a church that had a Thanksgiving Day service or spend time at one? Yeah, well, not many, but a few. You know why most churches don’t? Because we’re too busy cooking the turkey, watching the football, getting ready for the family; all these things that we’re thankful for. But ironically, the thing that we decide to cut off the list is, “Well, let’s go and praise God for the blessings He gives us.”

Now, I’m not saying that we need to add a Thanksgiving Day service to our schedule this week. There’s nothing in the Bible that says the day that we’ve designated in the United States as Thanksgiving Day has to be the day we gather together. But I do find it sort of ironic that the reason we don’t isn’t so much that it wasn’t something that was done, but rather it was something that people didn’t attend because they were too busy having the celebration of thankfulness to come and gather before God for Thanksgiving. And I’ve been guilty of that. There were plenty of times I had the opportunity, I didn’t go because, you know, there are things to do.

Which is to say, it’s really easy, even as we celebrate and we try to give thanks to God, to actually lose sight of what we’re doing. Are we actually thinking, “God?” Because you take away God and take away all those things that occupy our time that keep us from thanking God. Take away those things—you still have God. That’s what scripture wants us to keep in mind.

Even when we’re praying, do you ever take one of those different templates that get passed around on the order that you should pray? There’s lots of those, and they’re perfectly fine. But you start going down the list, right? “Okay, I need to praise God, I need to thank God,” so you start doing that. And that reminds you of something that you’re worried about. And so what do you do? You start praying about that thing.

Good thing we should bring our concerns to God. But then I realize what I do so often, even as I’m trying to thank God, is I end up spending all that time—it’s supposed to be a prayer of Thanksgiving to God—and it ends up being a prayer about the things I’m worried about that I wish God would fix. You ever do that? I do that way too often. And I know it. I go into it, I think, “I’m going to focus on what God has blessed me with,” and you know what? A minute into that prayer, boy, am I not right back to my own concerns.

And so it’s not just a day. It’s our lives do, even as we try to live lives of Thanksgiving, it’s so easy to just come back and here we are again. Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with bringing our concerns, our fears to God. In fact, we should. The problem is, are they becoming like notifications? Like, you go on your phone and you need to make a phone call, and then you see there’s this urgent text message. You start to answer that and ask a question, and you go onto Facebook to look up a birthday because that person was asking about someone’s birthday. And you see on there that someone else has written you, and you start to answer that, and there are times I’m 10 or 15 things down the list before I ever remember, “Wait a second, I was supposed to make a phone call when I picked up my phone.”

That’s how we handle it with God. There’s all this stuff, both internal stuff. Our hearts are constantly popping up notifications into our head: “Hey, I’m worried about this. Hey, I’m worried about that. I’m excited about this. I’m excited about that.” And the stomach chimes in, “Hey, I’m kind of hungry.” Keep going. And what do we find? They always seem to come up when it’s about Thanksgiving. Why is that?

Well, because our minds don’t hold on to it tightly enough. I don’t have problems with notifications on phones when I’m eating a meal because if you know me, I’m not the sort of person… the only time you’ll see my phone out outside of an emergency during a meal is if I want to take a picture of my food. It’s going away then. I am eating, right? It’s when I’m doing something that I’m not quite as focused on that, you know, suddenly that notification gets in the way.

Unless we’re engaged with something. And I think that’s a heart check for us. If, as I often do, find that those internal notifications come up when I’m praising God, does it say something about how truly thankful I am? And when we see over and over again, Psalm 95 is a great place to go, but this is not the only song by any stretch of the imagination that calls us to sing to the Lord, to make joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. If it’s not the only one, in fact, that’s what happens over and over again. Then for all the things we worry about, including how we live as faithful Christians, shouldn’t we keep coming back to, “Am I focused on praising Him, singing praises to Him, praying prayers of thanksgiving to Him?” Is that a key focus in my Christian walk, or is that something that gets down much lower in the process?

And when we do actually come to God and thank Him, are we thanking Him specifically? If we think about the Psalm, and we’re going to go through more of it, but as we do, I want us to hear how specific it is. It lists things that God does.

Because the place where we can often fall into trouble is, “Well, I know I need to thank God,” so you’re praying, you’re half asleep, either because you’re praying as you get up and you didn’t really want to wake up and the coffee isn’t brewed yet, or you fall on the bed and you know you need to pray. “I really should pray. God, thank you for all the blessings that You give.”

And sometimes that’s all we can muster. But there’s a lot of times where it wouldn’t hurt to stop and say, “Okay, if God said, ‘Oh, you’re welcome to tell me which one was a real blessing to you today,’” that we wouldn’t say, “Uh, um, God, let me get back to you on that. I know I received blessings today, so let me get back to you on that.” Even if the words aren’t really quite coming out because we’re tired, at least in our minds, are we thinking about the things that God’s doing for us? That in Him we live and move and have our being, that in Him we have salvation and deliverance, that in Him we have everything that occupies our time? Or there’s a job that provides for us or a home that keeps us safe from the elements or a church that we can be here together and worship Him in.

Sort of like when you go out to the mailbox and you get your mail, and I see something that looks sort of official, and I think this might be important, and it has my name on it. But then there’s a telltale second line. It says, “To Timothy Butler or Current Resident.” And I see that, and I know I can throw this straight in the trash. I don’t need to look at it because if they put “Current Resident” on it, it means it’s nothing that really matters to me.

And too often, we’re kind of just scattershot praising God and not actually thinking about it, and we’re sort of sending to God the equivalent of, “Thank you for the current resident. I don’t know who they are, but thank you for them.” God wants us to actually stop like the psalmists do and go down and think about it so that we actually understand what He’s doing. Not because God doesn’t remember; of course He knows, but He wants us to live lives of gratitude, to live lives that are aware of how He’s working in our lives. And we can’t do that if we’re not actually aware of what He’s doing.

So we offer consideration, this care. That’s why we praise Him. Take a look at verse three:

“For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In His hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are His also. The sea is His, for He made it; His hands formed the dry land. Oh, come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.”

Notice what the psalmist is doing here. Now, true, he’s not praising God for the meal He had today or whatever occupation He’s doing today, but He is praising God for specifics. And the one sometimes we overlook, notice here He’s thinking about the grandeur of what God has made.

And if we actually stop and look at this world, yeah, there are a lot of problems, but do we stop and think, “But look how beautiful this world is.” I think about this more if I get down into southern Missouri. I’m an Ozarkian at heart. You put me in those hills and you see those beautiful hills, the trees, the cliffs, and it’s just so beautiful. And you think, “Wow, God made this.” And God did.

But I think about just in our area, there’s so many beautiful spots around here that we’re reminded of this beautiful creation that God has made. How many times we’ve had it multiple times, an uncanny number of times, we walked outside here at Little Hills after a service—obviously not during the winter—but walk out during the summer and we’ve seen rainbows. Beautiful rainbows. And you look at that and remember that’s even a sign of God’s promise. Look at the grandeur of what God has made.

Do we take the time to stop and praise Him for that? It’s not just great; He made everything. And that’s where the psalmist dwells here. He says that the Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods.

Now, notably here, it’s not because the psalmist thinks there are all kinds of gods. What the psalmist is saying is all those things that pull at our hearts for worship, including, incidentally, we were talking a few weeks ago about idolatry as we were going through the Ten Commandments. The people of the time certainly were worshiping literal other gods. They couldn’t do anything for them, but they still worshiped them.

And then we talked about other things that we turn into gods. We find all kinds of gods to worship, and sometimes it’s even the gods of a holiday, right? We’re so busy getting ready for Thanksgiving that we forget to be thankful. It’ll be a great Thanksgiving if it kills me.

We forget the reason that we can even be thankful—because God has made everything, including us. And the psalmist here is drawing our attention to that, to recognize that there’s something incredible that God has done. We don’t have to look very far to see it. And whether it’s those big overarching things or the everyday life things, because God made those too.

You had a nice dinner before you came here, or you’re kind of hungry now and wishing I’d stopped talking about any more food, because nice dinner is still something on the down the horizon after service, whatever the case may be. God made that. As we eat it, we certainly give Him thanks for making delicious food.

So we eat that piece of pumpkin pie or apple pie or sweet potato pie. Do we give thanks to God for the fact that He made the fruits and vegetables that go into that? And as we’re enjoying that, God could have chosen not to do that. He could have just made something that made our bodies function for another day, go to the gas station, so to speak, hook up the fuel pump and fill it up and, “Oh, okay, I’m good to go.” But no, He took the time to give us taste buds and to make things taste good so that as we eat that, there’s this wonderful experience that we can share with each other.

The other gods of the ancient world were said to do various things for people, especially if those people did enough for them because they needed help. God doesn’t need any help. God just in His graciousness gives. And so the psalmist can walk down this list and say, whatever the greatest king on earth is, that king is nothing like the Lord. Whatever the greatest gods, whether they’re idols that people are worshiping, or things that people think are going to make them happy, or ideas that people think are going to make them happy, whatever that is, none of it is greater than God.

And something we can say decisively: none of those things ever made a single mountain, ever filled a single sea, covered the sky and stars. Do we hold on to that? And let’s not just think this is abstract. Think about back to verse one once again:

“Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord, let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.” He’s our deliverer. He’s our salvation.

This isn’t merely some abstract game where we think about things that God made sometime in the distant past before we ever had a single breath. Every single moment that we live, we can thank God for the fact that He has saved us. You trusted in Him. And if you haven’t, you could trust in Him right now and start thanking Him for that and be amazed by the fact that the one who can make a mountain and make stars and make pumpkin taste so good in a pie is also the one who cares enough about you to save you from yourself.

Because if we’re around ourselves very long, we realize we’re not always very pleasant. And as much as our world likes to talk about affirming our whims, whatever they may be, I think all of us intrinsically know and keep bumping back into the fact that we’re flawed individuals. Yeah, God looks at us. The God who can make the delicious food and the beautiful land and make absolutely everything happen, and He looks at us as the flawed individuals we are and doesn’t say, “Well, you know, I’ll tolerate them.” No, I will save them. I love them.

And so it goes on. We’ll look at verse 7 in a moment. Say that He’s actually our shepherd. He doesn’t just say, “Oh, I don’t want anything to do with them, but I’m not sure I want them destroyed. I’ll give them something.” No, He actually takes the time to guide us.

And when we look at His word, when we… see? Other things may fall, but God’s words stay steady. When we look at His word, what do we find? We find something that guides us over and over and over again.

This is not a book from one who doesn’t care. This is a book from one who cares and loves us. That’s why we come back to being thankful to Him over and over again because He’s the one actually in our lives and the nitty-gritty caring about us. And I think that’s an important stage to be set before we get to all the grand things that God has done.

Those things often remind us that just those wild moments where you see a beautiful place, think of the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen in your life, and you do maybe find yourself taken to, “Wow, God made this and I’m experiencing it.” But before we get there, we have that personal element, and it’s so important.

Think about, you go to some chain retailer, some chain restaurant, you go and you like the way it’s organized, and maybe afterward you read about it, and you find out that the current CEO of it is the person who came up with the concept for the restaurant. And he came up with the recipes and so on.

Now, maybe you decide to write that CEO a letter of thanks. “This was wonderful. I love this place.” But really, I think most of the time what we think about if we have a good experience is, “Well, we want to thank the people we actually interacted with, right? The waiter, waitress that waited the table?” But maybe someone wants to send compliments to the chef: “The steak, it was perfect. Oh, that was the best burger I’ve ever had,” right? Here, I’m back to food again, right? But we know the people actually that had a hand in our particular experience, right?

Something: you order something and it’s a rainy day, and the UPS delivery person comes up and takes special care to put the box someplace that’s not going to get wet. You’re not going to write UPS and thank them for taking care of your box. If you write them at all, it’s going to be to compliment that individual, and you’d like to thank that individual. Why? Because that’s the person that actually did something that you experienced.

Well, God, we’re not just going into His restaurant that you opened and we never interact with Him. No, we’re going into this world knowing that He actually has that personal touch. He’s the one actually coming and interacting with us. And so when we thank God, we’re not tweeting out to someone that we’ll never interact with. We’re tweeting out, we’re writing, we’re praying to the one who actually is right there with us.

That’s so crucial if we’re really going to understand what it means to be thankful. It shouldn’t be vague and abstract. Abstract.

Kind of interesting when you think about God compared to human beings because He’s God. If you’re talking about something massive that actually, anyone even bothers with the title CEO, it’s probably huge, and there’s all kinds of people, and the person who’s CEO generally isn’t going to be the person waiting the table or delivering the package. But God is both the chief executive of the universe and also the person who’s going to interact with you on a day-to-day basis.

That means we should care about what He thinks of this Thanksgiving. Does God say being thankful looks like? Ironically, I can’t say in my life I have ever pointed to President Washington as the person I go to to understand theology. And if you study the Founding Fathers, you know that while they acknowledge there was a God, they often were more interested in philosophy and big ideas of that sort than spending time reading God’s word.

But I was so struck as I was reading this week President Washington’s Declaration for the first National Day of Thanksgiving. Because it doesn’t sound like the way we typically describe it. It didn’t mention any football. It didn’t mention pie. It didn’t mention turkey or feasting. Notice what he does mention though:

“And also that we may then unite in most humble offering of our prayers and supplications to the great lord and ruler of nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all people.”

Notice he takes a different direction than we normally do. Thanksgiving is often about what’s in it for me and maybe being thankful for what’s in it for me. What did Washington say? Let’s take a day to confess our transgressions. Imagine that on a Thanksgiving card at Hallmark: Isn’t it lovely that we get together and confess how we sin individually and as a nation? Doesn’t sell very well, does it?

And he takes it from there to say that we could be spending that time in prayer that God would direct us both individually and as a nation on how we can be a blessing to others, not to ourselves, not even just to our nation, but to all people. And there, in that, we see a better picture of what the Bible’s talking about than the way we often approach Thanksgiving or our lives in general.

Because our lives are not lives meant to find ways to have blessings come upon ourselves. Our lives are not lives intended to find how to even bless those people within our group, whether it’s our church or our city or our country. Our calling as Christians is to be a blessing to this world.

It’s the very mandate that God gave Abraham so many years ago that continues with God’s people to be a blessing to all nations, that all that would look to the people of God would be blessed. Today so much of our time is arguing, “How are we going to get enough blessings for ourselves?” God wants us to be thinking about, “How are we going to give blessings to others?”

And if we really want to be thankful, if we want to take Thanksgiving Day and carry it beyond that and actually be living a biblical sense of Thanksgiving, note what we find in verse seven:

“We are to offer obedience, for He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.”

Right back to that very personal touch. Now listen to this part: “Today, if you hear His voice.” Today, if you hear His voice, we’re called to hear His voice. And then we go on in verse 8: “Do not harden your hearts as at Mirabah,” and He goes on to talk about how the Israelites did not obey God’s voice.

And notice how we move from Thanksgiving to acknowledging where we stray to doing something different. It’s exactly what President Washington mentioned. I’d love to hear it if we heard our presidents every year when they offer their Thanksgiving declaration. Wouldn’t that be amazing if this is what they called us to as a people? Let’s confess where we failed to be a blessing to people and then pray that God would allow us to be a blessing to all people.

Well, I’m not expecting that to come from our politicians, but I can say that’s what we should see coming from us as God’s people. Because whatever our culture says we should do on Thanksgiving or when we’re thankful, this is what God says He wants us to do. He wants us to respond with Thanksgiving, yes with our voices, yes with songs, but those voices and songs should be leading into lives that have a contagious Thanksgiving pouring out because we’re so amazed by what God has done for us that we want to do what He asked us to do.

We’ve talked about different ways that plays out over the last few weeks. We talked about not idolizing—I mentioned that just earlier. But think about the Ten Commandments we’ve looked at so far, and you can spoil it and look ahead and see the rest of them. You think about those and the other laws of God. Why does God call us to those things? Well, they’re best for us, but they’re also how we make a recipe of our lives to be that delicious offering, that wonderful pumpkin pie to the world.

God wants us to be faithful. He wants us to remember what He’s done and then share that with other people. He often takes us to what He’s done before He calls us on what He wants us to do because He knows that we’re too weak to do it on our own, but if we’re reminded of His faithfulness and His presence with us, then we’ll have the strength to do it.

And so, well, if we were writing a Thanksgiving song today, we probably wouldn’t make it, “Well, let’s praise God,” then talk about the amazing things He’s done both personally and in the world in general, and then talk about how we’re sinners and how we’ve had hard hearts in the past as God’s people. But that’s exactly what God’s word does because the critical thing we need to address as we’re praising God is, “Now what am I going to do?”

God’s offered salvation. That’s where we start. Now, what am I going to do with it? Not because I’m going to earn a salvation, but because I should live a life that’s a Thanksgiving offering. And again, that’s what we see in verse eight: “Do not harden your hearts as at Maribah, as on the day at Masa in the wilderness.”

It goes on about how the forefathers of these people had tested the Lord and had turned from Him. And here’s the thing: it hasn’t changed. We do this over and over again. I mean, how often? We could say this. We could think of those places in our lives even in the short time that we’ve been at church together, and think about those times that our hearts have been hardened.

And insert those there. You can think of your life and those times that your heart’s been hardened, and later on, you know you were doing what the Lord had not called you to do and had ignored the things that God was calling you to do. And here that, put in there: “Do not harden my heart, Tim,” and I can insert it. You could insert it. Take them out, put your name in.

Because if we’re truly thankful, thankfulness isn’t just a set of words that we put out even if they’re the right words, even if we’re keeping the focus on the Lord. I mean, that’s a step. If we’re going to get to this step, we need to start there. It’s a good foundation when we actually spend time praising God and praising God specifically. That’s the right movement.

But we need to actually then want to turn and be obedient, do His will. Because what that does enables us to be a people that actually allow others to experience Thanksgiving.

We think about how we’ve hopefully done it as well as we can. I have to say, the last couple of weeks have been good confession for me to mention the things I don’t really—I would rather not do or mention from the pulpit. I don’t like mentioning giving from the pulpit. And yet here we are. We have our pledge cards for the year, and we’ll have a budget meeting in January. And our faithful finance and budget committee did ask me, “Hey, could you preach a stewardship sermon this year?”

Well, if you can’t tell, this is that. And you’re saying, “But it doesn’t feel like one.” Well, good. That’s a good first step. But the other thing is, I’m pushing off because I don’t really want to do it.

But genuinely, one of the ways that we’re obedient is by giving. Take a look: 2 Corinthians chapter 9 verse 10.

“He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way, to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God.”

And here’s a striking thing. And this is why part of the obedience that we talk about is Thanksgiving. Yes, it’s doing God’s will. Don’t do things that God has told us not to do, right? Too many negatives in that sense—don’t do those things.

But one of the things God has called us to do is to give, to give to the needs of people around us, to give to His church. Why? Because it allows the multiplication of Thanksgiving. And it does that in several ways.

The straightforward way as we talk about giving to the church is that it enables the church to function. But what Paul has in mind there is specifically as the ministry of the church is able to go on and to serve the needs of the poor.

What happens when they receive blessing and they’re told it’s from the Lord? If we’re doing it right and we’re not bringing the attention on ourselves, then may it not be on ourselves?

But when, for example, the kids when we did Operation Christmas Child yesterday, when those kids receive those gift boxes on Christmas, I hope what they hear is that someone did this because that someone loves Jesus. And that kid, as he or she opens that box and sees the neat toys and things in it and sees the note and knows that someone from probably thousands of miles away actually did this without ever meeting him, without ever meeting her.

Now, what that child does is… says, “Wow. This God’s pretty amazing. These people sure like to know more.”

And as we go on in life, whether it’s toys or giving someone a meal who’s starving or giving someone clothes who needs clothing or whatever it might be, those different things that we, as God’s people, are called to do and have the blessing to do, and it’s…

People can praise God because of it.

That’s what Paul says is happening here, that as the gifts are being given to the church and it’s being distributed as need happens because the focus is not on the giver on earth, but rather the one who gave even them the stuff—the Lord. What happens is that the people are praising God. Is that what we’re doing?

It’s one of the challenges because we do like to get recognition, right? Think about Christmas time picking out gifts. You give a gift to someone, what do you want to hear from that person? “Wow, I love it. It’s wonderful.” And we want to think that’s not because it’s what we have to do, but someone’s just excited about it, right?

Give some of that gift, and a while back, I got someone a gift. I just happened to run across it, and I know there’s a name already written on this. This is obviously for that person. And you give that gift, and then it actually strikes a chord, and you hear back about it, right?

We’ve probably all had this experience at some point—you give something and the person’s just excited, and it causes that giving then causes Thanksgiving to us. Well, how much more so then, if we’re giving in the name of Jesus, or if we’re giving, if we’re listening to what people need, if we’re hearing what they need, and we’re giving it, are we turning away from the hardness of heart and to obedience to God? And as we do that, then bringing out Thanksgiving. And that’s what I mean by contagious Thanksgiving here.

Because that’s a key part of what the Lord was setting them up to do. They didn’t always understand it. But when they were so busy getting angry at God out in the wilderness and they were having hard hearts, what were they saying? What’s in it for me? It doesn’t seem to be advancing what I want. Lord, maybe I’ll go back to being a slave because that was, oh, that was so much better. We had good food then.

God says, “You should be focused on the fact that I’ve rescued you, that I love you, that I am providing for you, and that I’ve given you a mission to serve the world and be a blessing to the world,” and yet so often, so often, we miss that.

But God wants us to be the sort of people who are excited as He gives blessing to us and that we’re so inspired by the fact that we’ve been given something that we want to give others something, and that through that we see a chain reaction to Thanksgiving speeding through the world where more and more people are thankful to God.

That’s our purpose of the church. That’s our purpose as the church around the world. It’s not just here at Little Hills, the church. What are we called to do? We’re called to be a people who are thankful and are helping other people to understand what God’s done for them so they can be thankful too.

Isn’t it beautiful when it happens? Thanksgiving isn’t just a word. It isn’t just vaguely being thankful. We actually hear what the psalmist is walking us through here. We do have that focus on the Lord. We do have the specifics that we’re thankful for, and then we do take that and have it lead us into obedience, including obedience to pass on blessing to others.

We see that it’s so much more than that. It’s so much bigger than that. It’s so much more than whatever we can jam into our stomachs on Thursday. Because there are going to be times on that, as thankful as we are, by the time end of the meal, maybe we’re not so thankful. We’re thinking, “Oh, I’m not so thankful right now. That last helping of potatoes and the second slice of pie—I was thankful to eat it. I’m not so thankful as I’m done eating it.”

But you know, God’s blessing is something we never get enough of. And in a world that’s hurting and in need of God’s blessing, it’s something they’re never going to get enough of either.

So may we be a people who actually live out that biblical pattern of response and thankfulness.

What does that mean for each of us? Well, it means a lot of things. But I think if we do keep our focus this week on the Lord, and then keep our focus then, let’s keep being thankful in the Advent and do the same thing. And then let’s keep naming to ourselves and proclaiming to others what God has done specifically. And then seek to be a blessing to others. We have a lot of chances to do that. Some of that can be responding in giving. Some of it can be responding simply and turning away from places where sin is just enmeshed in our lives and we don’t want to let go and we say, “But God, you’ve blessed me so much. I’m going to respond. I don’t want to do this anymore. I want to do something that’s pleasing to You.”

An awful lot of it can be just seeking to find out how we bless other people and doing it. And I think that’s a perfect way to challenge us as we move from Thanksgiving into Advent. We go from Thanksgiving this Sunday to Advent next Sunday. How are we going to carry this forward? If we’re truly thankful this week for what God’s doing, then I believe the way we carry that forward is we start to use Advent not just as a time to be overly busy and stressed but as a time to actually be proclaiming the gospel, helping other people know about the Lord.

We can do that through things like Operation Christmas Child, sure, and we can do that through inviting. You’ll hear me again saying, and you’re going to think, “Oh, here he goes again, inviting.” We can do it through things like saying, “Would you come with me to the service?” And sometimes we don’t feel like it. I’m an introvert. There are a lot of times I don’t feel like it. I’ll just confess upfront—I’m not the best inviter in the world. I know it’s ironic; I’m a pastor. It’s not my natural gifting.

It’s not where I just naturally, it just like, I don’t find I’m inviting people before I even realize what I’m saying. I have to work up to it. “Okay, am I gonna invite? Am I going to invite?” But if we’re truly thankful and we’re thinking, “I want other people to know how good God is,” we have to know every time we invite someone to come with us and hear about the gospel and be encouraged by it, do you realize what a proclamation of Thanksgiving it is?

When we give that gift, someone loves it so much that he or she can’t wait to tell someone else about how wonderful this blessing they’ve received is. Think about what that says to us and think what we say to our God when we say, “I am so excited, Lord, about what You’re doing in my life. I just have to invite more people to know about You.”

So be praying this Advent, “How can I invite?” Because truly Thanksgiving is about responding and recognizing God’s graciousness, His love for us. And if that’s what we can exemplify in Thanksgiving and every day, we’re still going to be struggling sinners, but we’re a whole lot closer to where He wants us.

May we be people who respond to His graciousness. Would you pray with me, please?

Father, we see the pattern over and over again in Your word to be thankful. Sometimes we just are too vague. Sometimes we don’t spend time thinking out the individual blessings. Sometimes we get distracted. An awful lot of the time, no matter how thankful we are, we don’t want to go into that next step of meddling—of saying what we shouldn’t do or what we should do.

But Lord, would You help us to have lives that overflow with Thanksgiving, that we can’t resist doing what You want us to do because we recognize so powerfully the blessing of what You’ve done in our lives? First and foremost, that You have called us and redeemed us, and that all who call on Your name are saved. We pray this in Jesus’ precious name, Amen.

Thank you, Rob.

As the communion’s going around, let me just mention, the middle is gluten free and the outer rings are not. We also do ask, as we give out communion, that if you haven’t yet trusted in Jesus, that you let these elements pass you by. And you might say, “Well, that sounds like a lousy Thanksgiving table. I mean, the ancient word for this time in a service is the Eucharist, which in Greek is simply Thanksgiving.”

So if someone knocks on your door on Thanksgiving and says, “I have nowhere to go for Thanksgiving,” you say, “Get lost. You’re not part of this.” That would be kind of bad, wouldn’t it? So why do we say if you don’t yet believe in Jesus, please let this pass you by? Because we want you to know Jesus, and we want you to be at this table.

And so this is not a “Get lost” message. This is a “Get saved” message. Come and know Jesus. And if you don’t yet know Jesus, and you’re saying, “I’m struggling. I don’t even know what I should be thankful for or how I should be. I just know I have a lot messed up in my life,” Jesus will take you right at that point. You can pray to Him right now and say, “Lord, I am a messed up sinner. I just need Your salvation. I want You to be my Lord.” I’ll be thankful, faithful to answer that.

If you’d like someone to pray with you, of course, here we would love to, and if you’re online, our online church family would love to. And as we do, then we say—oh, I say this because this is sincere—we want you to come to the Thanksgiving table with us. So come back next week and take these elements. Come back online next week and grab a cup of juice and a piece of bread and take these elements together with us as the body of Christ around the world, that we would take these elements knowing why we’re thankful.

You take them and you don’t know the Lord; there might be things to be thankful for, but we need to know who the current recipient, our current resident is. We need to think about the one and what He’s done for us. But when we do, and He calls us into His presence here to strengthen us that we can have those lives of outpouring.

So it was on the night He was betrayed, Jesus took the bread and He broke it and He gave it to them saying, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” And, likewise, after supper, He took the cup and He said, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood poured out for you under the remission of sins. Do this as often as you drink of it, in remembrance of Me.”