November 18, 2007

Sermon:  Get Ready, Thanksgiving Is Coming!

 Thanksgiving is more than a day in November that students of history are taught to remember, more than a date that we still celebrate with turkey and dressing piled high on our plate…

Thanksgiving is also not a time to worry or to complain about having had to work for something.  The second scripture this morning should have made that clear for it wasn’t too long ago that this country was just getting settled.  But who was the first one to see the continental United States?  It is at this time of the year that children are taught about the Mayflower, Pilgrims and the Thanksgiving holiday.

For just over two centuries, some Americans have been coming away from that account with the idea that the Pilgrims were the first to land on our shores. But there is also the theory that Indians migrated from the Asian continent across Alaska and into America, possibly as early as the biblical account of Babel. Although Vikings from Greenland and Iceland visited the Atlantic coast around the year 1000, they did not settle. Other Europeans would come and go in the 1500's. When the Pilgrims arrived in 1607, they found a group of Polish artisans already hard at work.

So who was the first to say, "Land ho!"? The answer lies in these inspired words from Psalms 90:2: "Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God." Before the earth was even formed, God could see the history and topography of the United States in his mind's eye. Aren't you thankful we have such a great and eternal God?  Remember: before every discovery, God was there.

Do you know what was eaten on the first Thanksgiving Dinner?  A kindergarten teacher was telling her students all about the Pilgrims as she prepared them for the Thanksgiving season. After one little girl had gone home and shared the details she remembered from her teacher's lesson, her mother asked if she could tell her what the Pilgrims ate during that first Thanksgiving. The little girl was stumped and said, "I can't remember, Mommy, but you can ask my teacher. She was there!"

Despite what you may have been taught, the Mayflower pilgrims probably didn't have ambrosia, ham, potato salad, and pumpkin pie. It more likely that with their lack of resources, they had roots, berries, wild fowl and perhaps some hasty pudding. Hasty pudding is simply a cornmeal mush, so named for the short time it takes to prepare it.

A chef was preparing a Thanksgiving meal in a restaurant when a young man came running in the back door and shouted at him, "Carl, your house is on fire!" The chef immediately dropped his cookware and bolted out the door with his apron flapping in the breeze. After about fifty yards, he stopped in his tracks and said, "Wait a minute, my name isn't Carl and I don't even have a house!"

Most of us eat "hasty pudding" more often than we will admit. We go off with incomplete information to an uncertain location. Therefore, it's only natural that stressed-out people eat more desserts, because "stressed" spelled backwards is "desserts." If that's true that stressed-out people eat more dessert there could be the excuse between Thanksgiving and New Year.

Happily, our Creator left this advice Proverbs 19:2: "It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way."  We are to patiently wait on the Lord, for his timely and perfect course of action.

For while we still offer the traditional prayer, we pray out of habit without being aware that the Pilgrims thanked God just for being alive…

Thanksgiving season ought to be a great time for curing people of a certain disease of which we all have read.  This disease is a comparatively rare affliction and fortunately so. Its main feature is forgetfulness. There are cases in which In this season of Thanksgiving there is a term that surfaces loud and clear, it is called “ingratitude’ and it is nothing but a form of spiritual amnesia. It stands for a voluntary or involuntary blotting out of the memory of the past. The mind is no longer sensitive to past benefits that have been bestowed up it. It is as if these things had never been done “to or for or on behalf of.” And thus ingratitude becomes a spiritual menace. God's own people are very apt to suffer from this disease as we forget past mercies in the face of present “emergencies” or things that seem immediately important, while the “mercies” get shoved into the background, our memory had become a complete blank and the past was utterly blotted out.  Much like amnesia, physically it is, fortunately, a rare disease, but spiritually it is not rare. The psalmist calls upon his soul, "And forget not all His benefits." Kipling has, as the refrain of his immortal "Recessional," the words, "Lest we forget, lest we forget."

For the strength that He gave them to endure and survive hunger and hardship that’s unknown in the present where progress and plenty have made our lives pleasant…

Paul compares the possessors of spiritual gifts to members of the human body because as the members of our body are none of our doing or deserving, neither are the spiritual gifts we possess. They are God's gifts entrusted to us for a purpose. If that purpose isn't fulfilled, His gifts are wasted. What's the use of having an eye or a hand that doesn't serve the entire body? A test of the genuineness of any gift is whether it benefits the body of Christ as a whole, or only the possessor. Does it tend to unite the body or to divide it? Does it make members who are different from us feel estranged or fellow members with us of one and the same body?

Nearly every person acknowledges that it would be a blessed thing to be a Christian, if only he could reap the benefits without the costs. The common drifter has pretty much the same idea about the things that pertain to respectable living. He would have no objections to being well fed, and clothed too, for that matter, if only he could have these things without working for them. "I often feel that you Christians are to be envied," a young man remarked, "but it would cost me something to become a Christian." In other words, he would have been glad to have eaten bread in the kingdom of God, but he was not willing to work for it.

That depends not on god but on mechanization, we tend to forget that our forefathers came to establish a country under God’s name…

Worship that is accepted by God is a privilege unique to the Christian (1 Pet. 2:5). It is not a right. I am permitted to offer acceptable worship only by the grace of God.

Therefore it is disheartening when children of God deliberately reject this privilege and wantonly absent themselves from the public assembly God has ordained for His glory and our good.  Consider briefly the significance of worship:

It is obedience to a divine command.

It is a means of nourishing the spirit.

It assists in achieving spiritual growth.

It encourages others in their spiritual development.

It shows the world where my priorities are.

It is one means of expressing my love for God.

It is an avenue God has provided by which I can praise His name.

It is the offering of spiritual sacrifices.

It is a way of showing my thanksgiving to God for all He has done for me.

It is a period of communion with God with the world shut out entirely.

It is an experience that should make the heart of every Christian glad!

Will you join your fellow Christians this Lord's day as they assemble to honor His name? Your Father will be looking for you.

But we feel we’re so strong we no longer need faith, and it now has become nothing more than a wraith of the faith that once founded this powerful nation…

Robert Louis Stevenson said: "A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of goodwill; and their entrance into a room, is as though another candle has been lighted. We need not care whether they could prove the forty-seventh proposition; they do a better thing than that, they practically demonstrate the great Theorem of the Liveableness of Life." Yet how few realize that gladness of soul is a binding duty, a solemn command from God's Word to God's people, and that joy is among the first fruits of the Spirit. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world which remain unknown to ourselves, or, when they are disclosed, surprise nobody so much as the benefactors.

Mrs. Green thanked Tom, the grocery boy, for delivering a loaf of bread.

"Do not thank me. Thank Grocer Jones," Tom smiled. "He gave me the loaf to deliver."  But when she thanked the grocer, he said, "I get the bread from Baker Brown. He makes it, so he deserves the thanks."  So Mrs. Green thanked the baker. But he told her that Miller Milligan should be given the gratitude. "Without Miller Milligan's flour, I could not make bread," Brown replied.  The miller told her to thank Farmer Foster because he made the flour from Foster's wheat. But the farmer also protested, "Don't thank me; thank God," Foster said. "If He did not give my farm sunshine and rain, I could not grow wheat." Yes, even a common loaf of bread can be traced back to God, the Giver of "every good and perfect gift" (Josh. 1:17).

In the name of the Maker and the Lord of creation; oh, teach us dear God we are all pilgrims still, subject alone to Your guidance and will,…

What is prayer? Has every prayer power with God? Let us endeavor to get some clear ideas on that point. Some people seem to regard prayer as the rehearsal of a set form of solemn words, learned largely from the Bible or a liturgy, and when uttered they are only from the throat outward. Genuine prayer is a believing soul's direct conversation with God. Phillips Brooks has condensed it into four words--a "true wish sent God-ward." By it adoration, thanksgiving, confession of sin, and petition for mercies and gifts ascend to the throne, and by means of it infinite blessings are brought down from heaven. The pull of our prayer may not move the everlasting throne, but--like the pull on a line from the bow of a boat--it may draw us into closer fellowship with God and fuller harmony with His wise and holy will.

And show us the way to purposeful living so we may have reason for daily thanksgiving…

"I do not have to thank anyone for anything I have," an old miser grumbled. "Everything I have I got the hard way--by the sweat of my own brow."

"But who gave you the sweat?" asked his neighbor.

The old miser hung his head in guilty silence. He could not ignore the fact that God had given the "sweat," the strength to work hard and gain material wealth.

Yes, everything that we are or that we possess is because of God's loving kindness. Therefore, it is good for us all to pause at least once a year and say, "Thank You, God."

Actually, everyday should be one of thanksgiving. Why? Because of spiritual and material blessings.[1]  Charles Dickens said that we are somewhat mixed up here in America. He told an audience that instead of having one Thanksgiving Day each year we should have 364. "Use that one day just for complaining and griping," he said. "Use the other 364 days to thank God each day for the many blessings He has showered upon you."

And make us once more a God-fearing nation and not just a puppet of controlled automation.

[for] The art of thanksgiving is thanksliving. It is gratitude in action.

It is thanking God for the gift of life by living it triumphantly.

It is thanking God for your talents and abilities by accepting them as obligations to be invested for the common good.

It is thanking God for health and strength by the care and respect you show your body.

It is thanking God for all that men and women have done for you by doing things for others.

It is thanking God for happiness by striving to make others happy.

It is thanking God for beauty by helping to make the world more beautiful.

It is thanking God for inspiration by trying to be an inspiration to others.

Facts have been published concerning a minister's son who disappeared from an army training camp, was hunted for as a deserter, and later turned up as an unnamed man on one of the transports sent back from a military hospital. He had found the longing to be at the front too strong to resist, had apparently re-enlisted under another name, was sent to the firing line, was wounded in the head and when consciousness was restored, he had lost all memory of the past. His name was found to be an assumed one and he was unable to tell who he was or where he came from. His former life had become a complete blank and, when his parents recognized him as their long lost son he did not give the first sign of recognition and knew none of his former friends or acquaintances.

George and Jeanie Douglas were bankrupt just fifteen years ago. Today they enjoy the benefits of being co-founders of the $40 million company Computer Business Services. When George lost his job and was trying to figure out what his future would hold, he decided to change his attitude about life and become more of an optimist. As part of his new commitment to living with greater expectancy, Douglas took a spiral notebook and drew a line down the middle of one page. On one side he wrote "yes" and on the other he put "no." He then stuck that notebook in their car as a reminder to look for opportunities. Every time they drove into a parking lot they quit taking the open parking spaces far from the door and started driving up toward the front with expectations of finding a place. They tracked their results from every parking lot for seven years. If they found a spot close to the door they marked it on the "yes" side of the notebook. If they had to take a place that wasn't near the door then they marked "no." They compiled the results of their little seven-year experiment and found that 67 percent of the time there was a parking space near the door. Life has similarities to parking spaces. Opportunities await those people who live with expectancy. Those who live without it may never realize the potential they possess.

"The disposition to give a cup of cold water to a disciple is a far nobler property than the finest intellect. Satan has a fine intellect, but not the image of God."

Seneca, the great Roman orator, said: "As benevolence is the most sociable of all virtues, so it is of the largest extent; for there is not any man, either so great or so little, but he is yet capable of giving and of receiving benefits."

Some of the greatest benefits to mankind have had their source in men who have experienced great affliction. The German poet Goethe said, "I never experienced affliction that did not turn into a poem." The music that gives man a taste of heaven has often come from afflicted hearts.

To quote the great leader of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, "The believing man hath the Holy Ghost; and where the Holy Ghost dwelleth, He will not suffer a man to be idle, but stirreth him up to all exercises of piety and godliness, and of true religion, to the love of God, to the patient suffering of afflictions, to prayer, to thanksgiving, and the exercise of charity towards all men."

--Cuyler

If you are grateful, say so! Thanksgiving is only half said until you have done something to show your thankfulness.  A missionary to India was traveling through a city and stopped to speak to a man beside the road. He talked with the man for a time about Jesus. Then, having to travel on, he gave him a few pages of the Bible in the man's language. The Indian read them and was thrilled to learn of Jesus.  To show his gratitude, the man measured the footprints left by the missionary, and made a pair of moccasins. He then traveled 200 miles to give them to the missionary as an expression of thanks.  The missionary's life was enriched by the gift, but the Indian man was much more enriched because he had expressed his thanks.  Have you ever tried to give 200 miles of thanks?  Try it--you will be a better person because of it.

 This is the season of thanksgiving. Little pilgrim, you have landed on a strange and alien shore, climbed from the ship that brought you here, and found in the light of dawn a brand new land. Now you explore what you believe to be a virgin forest, a place of promise, a territory for the taking where you can stake your claim. The foliage is lush; the soil is rich. The generous, warm sea of life laps around your eager feet and coughs up fat oysters and scallops for you to taste.

The delight that dances in your eyes tells how glad you are you've come. New friends dance around you, too, and share their planting secrets of corn and roots and herbs. They lay the venison at your fire and run with you naked through the trees.

But winter is coming to define for you what thankful is. When frozen seas and barren trees turn their chilling back on games and feasts, when roaring winds strip solace from the glen and teach you to seek shelter, you will need to turn to a source older than the trees for knowledge, for sustenance, and for help.

When the hope of spring planting and the hot toil of summer pass and you have learned the treasure of the harvest, you will again sing—this time a better song of praise, a wiser hymn of gratitude. And you will trade the dance of innocence for the better, grander festival of joyful thanksgiving—the thanksgiving of one forgiven.

Lord, we are all "strangers and pilgrims" here. During every season may our family keep our eyes set on the land to which we are going in glad thanksgiving for your bountiful provision in Christ Jesus.

Thanksgiving is the harvest of the heart

After the fruit and grain are stored away.

The quiet season of remembering,

The moment when we pause to praise and pray.

The first New England Thanksgiving was celebrated less than a year after the Plymouth colonists had settled in the new land of Massachusetts Bay Colony. The first dreadful winter in the colony had killed nearly half of its members. But new hope emerged in the summer of 1621 when the corn harvest brought rejoicing. Governor William Bradford decreed that a three-day feast be held beginning on December 13, 1621. Thus came about a Thanksgiving Day set aside for the special purpose of prayer as well as celebration.

The custom of Thanksgiving Day spread from Plymouth to other new England colonies. During the Revolutionary War, eight special days of thanks were observed for victories and deliverance from perilous times. On November 26, 1789, President George Washington issued a general proclamation for a day of thanks. For many years there was no regular national Thanksgiving Day in the United States until President Lincoln in 1863 proclaimed the last Thursday in November as "A day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father." As one studies early American history it becomes obvious that our early settlers and forefathers expressed their "thanksgiving" and their "gratitude" to God daily rather than once a year. As a nation we need to go back to the pilgrims' fine art of gratitude toward God!

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