MESSAGE: THANKSGIVING DAY (NOVEMBER, 27, 2014) PSALM 95:1-7 Saints: May the Lord Bless the explication of His Holy Word. Amen. Thanksgiving weekend brings many good things to heart and mind. I have young memories of the joy of having a four-day weekend from school, waking up Thursday morning to the aroma of the turkey beginning to permeate the house. We had early dinner on Thanksgiving Day largely so we could enjoy cold turkey sandwiches that evening. I played in one high school football game: a traditional rivalry game at 10 o’ clock Thanksgiving morning, finished in time for everyone to go home and celebrate dinner. Sports fans were grateful to the Detroit Lions professional football team that started the tradition of playing on Thanksgiving Day back in the 1930’s. The Macy’s parade televised from New York City brought Santa on the scene for the first time that year. Around two o’ clock in the afternoon, the turkey was done: mashed potatoes, homemade stuffing, all the goodies, pumpkin pie. Turkey was a real treat, and while my family was not poor, we were not rich, and it was a special meal for a special day. We have many other ‘diversions’ at this time of year in 2014 than we used to have. The shopping season begins earlier, stores are open Thanksgiving Day, movies sometime come out on Thanksgiving Day, one can always shop on line, and the busyness of life continues through what was once a holiday for refection and family. As believers, we have much to be thankful for, and psalm 95 invites us to ‘.e before His presence with thanksgiving..’ (verse 2). How do we give thanks? We can sing his praises “Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms.” (verse 2). Verses 3 through 5 explain that God is deserving of praises: “For the Lord is the great God, And the great King above all gods. (4) In His hand are the deep places of the earth; The heights of the hills are His also. (5) The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land.” God is the King of creation, and He who made all of creation. Everything in the universe is His, as that includes us, our lives, and all that make our lives worth living. The entire universe is a cause for rejoicing. Everything is in His hands: from the deep places of the earth to the heights of the highest hills. All of creation, and all we do, say, and experience, are given to us by God the great King above all gods. He is worthy of all gratitude and praise. So “Oh come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.” (verse 6) He alone is worthy of our worship, and He alone is our Maker. Nothing is available to us, our existence, our goods, our relationships, our families, are all Blessings to us from God. We have achieved none of it on our own, and we cannot draw a single breath without the movement of God in our lives. Be it our lives, the world we inhabit or the things we possess, they are all given to us through the grace of God. “For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand.” (verse 7). God tends to our every need as a loving Father, and a devoted guardian. We have His ever-present guidance to be thankful for as well. It is human nature to sometimes overlook these Blessings, but let us shout joyfully to Him out of gratitude for our thanksgiving dinner, a warm home, friends and family, faith, and our facebook church community. So “Oh come, let us sing to the Lord!”(verse 1). There is an old Quaker hymn titled “How Can I Keep From Singing”. Every day we rise from sleep and experience this life, is an opportunity for a ‘thank-offering’ to God who has Blessed us with another day. Our lives are a lot more comfortable due to the mercies of Almighty God, than the lives of the Pilgrims whose journey we commemorate today. They faced the cold of Massachusetts, the uncertainty of the new world, the unpredictability of interaction with the Native Americans, whether they can obtain food supplies to survive, and knowing they would never return to England. Yet with all the adversity, their faith stayed strong and their faith got them through. From the diaries of the Pilgrims they recorded much of the difficulties they faced, but also they recorded a sermon from a service at the Plymouth Pilgrim plantation in 1621: “Lay away all thought of former things and forget them and think upon the things that are; look not gapingly one upon other, pleading your goodness, your birth, your life you lived, your means you had and might have had; here you are by Gods providence under difficulties; be thankful to God, it is no worse, and take it, in good part that which is, and lift not up yourself because of former privileges; when Job was brought to the dung-hill, he sat down upon it, Job 2:8, and when the Almighty had been bitter to Naomi, she would be called Marah; consider therefore what you are now, and whose you are; say not I could have lived thus, and thus; but say thus and thus I must live: for God and natural necessity requireth, if your difficulties be great, you had need to cleave the faster together, and comfort and cheer up one another, laboring to make each others burden lighter; there is no grief so tedious as a churlish companion and nothing makes sorrow easy more than cheerful associates: bear ye therefore one anothers burthen, and be not a burthen one to another; avoid all factions, forwardness, singularity and withdrawings and cleave fast to the Lord, and one to another continually; so shall you be a notable precedent to these poor heathens, whose eyes are upon you, and who very brutishly and cruelly do daily eat and consume one another, through their emulations, ways and contentions; be you therefore ashamed of it, and win them to peace both with yourselves, and one another, by your peaceable examples, which will preach louder to them, than if you could cry in their barbarous language; so also shall you be an encouragement to many of your Christian friends in your native country, to come to you, when they hear of your peace, love and kindness that is amongst you: but above all, it shall go well with your souls, when that God of peace and unity shall come to visit you with death as he hath done many of your associates, you being found of him, not in murmurings, discontent and jars, but in brotherly love, and peace, may be translated from this wandering wilderness unto that joyful and heavenly Canaan. Amen” Take to heart the words of the preacher from four centuries ago as they are still so true. If your difficulties be great, you need to join together, and comfort and cheer up one another, striving to lighten each other’s burdens. Here we do the actions of Jesus, and we bring Jesus to each other. Your lives may have pain, and the pain may seem insurmountable, but that is the time to be thankful to God that you can call out to Him, and enter His Presence. If this time of year is a sad time for you, reach out and be with your facebook friends, your prayer warriors, your family in Jesus. What the pilgrim preacher stated is true of us too, even if we do not face their obstacles, only staying together as a family of believers, worshipping God, and having faith in Him will bring us to a better place, and eventually, to the Promised Land, beyond the ‘wandering wilderness’ of our lives. So may the Everlasting King of Creation, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, whose heart overflows with love for us, Bless us today and all our days. Amen. May you all have a Happy, Healthy, Blessed and Safe Thanksgiving, and share this message with family and loved ones. This weekend for Sunday church I begin a three part series on the faces of Christmas as we prepare to celebrate the Birthday of Jesus. I invite you to join me, and we keep each other in prayer. Please worship Him in song to the links below. Amen. youtu.be/B4nKrFLQiE0 youtu.be/9xQdHu3sQtU
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 02:08:56 +0000
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