Wednesday, November 21, 2018
Thanksgiving
Special ~ Giving Thanks
Grace Fellowship Church
Pastor/Teacher, Jim Rickard
When we learn about giving thanks or
thanks-giving in the Bible, we learn that from the original Hebrew and Greek,
it has special meaning. From the several Old Testament Hebrew words like TODAH
and YADAH, it means, “to give thanks in praise or the confession of thanks with
praise,” to glorify God. In addition, the word ZAMAR means, “to give thanks in
singing praise.” As such, thanksgiving was a central part of OT worship, as
sacrifices and offerings were to be made not grudgingly, but with thanksgiving,
cf. Psa 54:6; Jonah 2:9. And in
fact, we see in the Psalms that the psalmist valued a song of thanksgiving more
than sacrifice, Psa 69:30-31.
Psa
54:6, “Willingly I will sacrifice to You; I will give thanks to Your name, O
LORD, for it is good.”
Psa
69:30-31, “I will praise the name of God with song and magnify Him with
thanksgiving. 31And it will please the LORD better than an ox or a
young bull with horns and hoofs.”
In addition, the Pilgrimage to the Tabernacle or
Temple, along with Temple worship were characterized by thanksgiving, Psa 42:4; 95:2; 100:4; 122:4.
Psa
95:2, “Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving, let us shout joyfully
to Him with psalms.”
Psa
100:4, “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give
thanks to Him, bless His name.”
We also see in the OT that “thankfulness” was
expressed:
a. For
personal, Psa 35:18, and national
deliverance, Psa 44:7-8.
b. For
God’s faithfulness to the covenant, (i.e., His promises), Psa 100:5.
c. For
forgiveness of sin, Psa 30:4-5; Isa 12:1.
In addition, all creation joins in offering
thanks to God, Psa 103:22; 145:10.
Psa
35:18, “I will give You thanks in the great congregation; I will praise You
among a mighty throng.”
Psa
44:7-8, “But You have saved us from our adversaries, and You have put to shame
those who hate us. 8In God we have boasted all day long, and we will
give thanks to Your name forever. Selah.”
Psa
100:5, “For the LORD is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting and His
faithfulness to all generations.”
Psa
30:4-5, “Sing praise to the LORD, you His godly ones, and give thanks to His
holy name. 5For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for a
lifetime; Weeping may last for the night, but a shout of joy comes in the
morning.”
Psa
145:10, “All Your works shall give thanks to You, O LORD, and Your godly ones
shall bless You.”
In the great celebration of setting up the Ark of
the Covenant in Jerusalem, David employed Levites “to invoke, to thank, and to
praise the Lord,” 1 Chron 16:4; cf. 23:30; Neh 12:46. This was a special Psalm of Thanksgiving written and
sung by David, 1 Chron 16:4, 7-36,
that is also found in Psa 105:1-15. It
was an expression of his tremendous gratitude towards God for all that God had
done. In it, we see many categories of thanksgiving that should be in our
hearts and on our lips. There are four significant aspects of thankfulness that
jump out from this Psalm.
1. Remembering what God has done.
2. Telling others about it.
3. Showing God’s glory to others.
4. Offering gifts of self, time, and resources.
The principle is: If you are truly thankful, your
life will show it.
The same went for the first settlers here in the
“New World,” when in 1620 a band of dedicated believers called
“Separatist” left England as a result of religious persecutions, boarded the
Mayflower and landed in Plymouth Massachusetts. A year later the prayer by
William Bradford was given to thank God for His divine providence for those who
survived the horrific ordeals of their travel and first year in the Americas.
Bradford, in the fall of 1621, in thanks to God for His Divine Providence,
including the preparation of the American Indian Squanto to help them noted, “Thank you Lord for sending Squanto to us.
We know your hand has been upon him throughout all of his trials, and that You
have prepared him to be our guide and friend in a time of great need. Squanto
is your living answer to our tears and prayers.”
Bradford also stated, “May
not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: “Our fathers were
Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this
wilderness; but they cried unto the Lord, and he heard their voice, and looked
on their adversity, etc. Let them therefore praise the Lord, because he is
good, and his mercies endure forever. Yea, let them which have been redeemed of
the Lord, show how he hath delivered them from the hand of the oppressor. When
they wandered in the desert wilderness out of the way, and found no city to
dwell in, both hungry, and thirsty, their soul was overwhelmed in them. Let
them confess before the Lord his loving kindness, and his wonderful works
before the sons of men”.”
Even though Bradford and the band of faithful pilgrims
endured more hardship than most of us will ever know, they continued to give
thanks to God for seeing them through it all, giving them endurance to
withstand and happiness within their souls.
As a shining example of God’s grace, mercy and love, these
brave men and woman have been memorialized in our current day celebration of
Thanksgiving. In whose footsteps we should follow and direct all of our
thanksgiving to God our Father, rather than just having a prideful internal
mental ascent of thanksgiving directed to no one. No, it is not enough to just
be thankful, we must be giving thanks to the one and only God our Father in
thought, word, song, and deed, because He is the author and provider of all
that we have and do.
So, we see that the Hebrew words tell us of the
gratitude towards God we are to be expressing in thanksgiving with our words,
songs, and deeds. And, to express this thanksgiving to God, it all starts with
the mental attitude of gratitude towards Him.
Therefore,
giving thanks is that form of worship in which the believer acknowledges all
that God has done for him, knowing that God has provide all things from His
grace from eternity past, which has been poured out on to us in time and
eternity future.
During this Thanksgiving holiday, we are to focus on our
blessings and express our gratitude to God for them. But thanks should be in
our thoughts and on our lips every day. We can never say thank you enough to
parents, friends, co-workers, leaders, the military, police officers, firemen,
teachers, etc., and especially to God. When thanksgiving becomes an integral
part of your life, you will find that your attitude toward life will change.
You will become more positive, gracious, loving, and humble. And, most important
of all, you will be glorifying God!!
As Paul stated in 1
Cor 1:4, “I give thanks to my God always concerning you because of the grace of
God that was given to you in Christ Jesus.”
Communion:
Paul never tired of giving thanks for the grace of God in Jesus’s
person and work. And neither should we. God has shown His love for us, even
when we were enemies of God, Rom 5:8.
He called us out of darkness and made us heirs of God, Rom 8:17. Jesus bore the punishment we deserved, and we receive His
perfect righteousness, 2 Cor 5:21.
Therefore, we are to give praise to Him for all that He has done for our
salvation; past, present, and future.
The Greek is similar with words like EUCHARISTEO
and its cognates that mean, “to be grateful or thankful, the giving of thanks,
gratitude, etc.,” of which the root word is CHARIS that means, “grace,
gratitude, and thanks.” Additionally, the word ANTHOMOLEGEOMAI means, “to
acknowledge fully, to confess, to give thanks.”
Luke
2:38, “At that very moment she,
(the prophetess Anna), came up and began
giving thanks to God, and continued to speak of Him to all those who were
looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.”
Heb
13:15, “Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to
God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks (HOMOLEGEO)
to His name.”
Thanksgiving is why the Lord Jesus Christ gave the Church
the ordinance to commemorate His victory upon the Cross, Mat 26:26-28; Mark 14:22-24; Luke 22:19-20; 1 Cor 11:23-26.
This was celebrated in the early church during
their “love feasts,” where the church, Jew and Gentile together, would gather
to share a supper, cf. 1 Cor 11; Jude
1:12, along with the communion bread and wine, to give thanks to God for
what the Lord Jesus Christ completed upon the Cross. They did this while
fellowshipping with each other, and with the Father, signifying the peace they now
had in Christ!
Col 1:12-14, “Joyously
giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance
of the saints in light. 13For He delivered us from the domain of
darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, 14in
whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
Therefore, thanksgiving is a natural element of
Christian worship, 1 Cor 14:16-17,
and is to characterize all Christian life, Col
2:7; 4:2. Early Christians expressed thanks:
a. For
Christ’s healing ministry, Luke 17:16.
b. For
Christ’s deliverance of the believer from sin, Rom 6:17-18; 7:24-25a.
c. For
God’s indescribable gift of grace for salvation in Christ, 2 Cor 9:14-15; 1 Cor 15:57; cf. Rom 1:21.
d. For
the faith of fellow Christians, Rom 1:8.
Rom 6:17-18, “But thanks be to God that
though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form
of teaching to which you were committed, 18and having been freed
from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.”
In celebration of what our Lord lovingly has done and
accomplished for us upon the Cross, we offer praises of thanksgiving to God our
Father, as stated in Heb 13:15, “By Him
therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the
fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name.”
1 Cor 11:23-24, “For
I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord
Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; 24and when
He had given thanks, He broke it and said, ‘This is My body, which is for
you; do this in remembrance of Me’.”
Let us eat the bread!
1 Cor 11:25, “In the
same way (giving thanks) He took the cup also after supper, saying,
‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it,
in remembrance of Me’.”
Let us drink the cup!
1 Cor 11:26, “For as
often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death
until He comes.”
Offering
Psa 50:23, “He who
offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving honors Me; and to him who orders his way
aright I shall show the salvation of God.”
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