Drawing on the writings of Puritan Richard Rogers, this sermon presents thanksgiving not merely as a holiday tradition but as an “extraordinary means of grace” designed to keep the believer’s heart bound to Christ. Centered on the instructions found in Psalm 105, the message warns against the severe sin of ingratitude: often rooted in a prideful sense of entitlement. It urges listeners to direct their gratitude upward to God Himself, rather than stopping at the enjoyment of His gifts.
Transcript
I was given a collection of 17 books written by Puritans for my birthday, and so this week I’ve been reading Holy Helps for a Godly Life that was written by Richard Rogers. He was the author of that book. He actually wrote a very lengthy book. It’s a huge book called Seven Treaties, and this little book, Holy Helps, is a summary of the Third Treatise in that book.
The whole thing was a comprehensive book, which is sort of like a travel guide for the Christian life. It helps from the very beginning what it means to come to genuine faith in Christ and what it is to use the means of blessing and strength that God gives to encourage us and keep us in the faith. And that’s what this summary is in the third treatise in this book, Holy Helps.
He deals with all the things that today some people call the means of grace. Coming to the Word of God for spiritual nutrition, the time that we spend with the Lord in prayer, coming to worship, celebrating the Lord’s table and baptism and using all of these things that recognizing, first of all, that this is what keeps Christians strong in the Lord. It’s not what saves any of us. He’s very clear that we come to faith originally by exercising faith in Jesus Christ. And by the pure grace of God through that faith, we come to a knowledge of God and to an experience of salvation.
But these are the means that keep our hearts bound to Christ. As we were just singing, our hearts absolutely are prone to wander. And so we need means of grace to keep us true to the Lord. And so he lists all these things, and I mentioned it today because at the end of the book, he gives, those are the regular things. Going to the Lord every day, we need some nourishment from God, from His Word. to spend time with the Lord in conversation and prayer. We need to be doing these things daily and weekly, coming to place ourselves under the preaching of God’s word and the ministry of God’s word, experiencing the fellowship of the body. All those things is normal Christian life.
Extraordinary Means of Grace
But he mentioned two extraordinary, what he called extraordinary means of grace that we are to do. And the first of these is Thanksgiving. And he doesn’t mean the daily Thanksgiving that we are to do, give thanks and everything. He means what we are going to be doing most likely this coming Thursday. He’s calling attention to special times of Thanksgiving for a particular purpose. And that’s why it’s extraordinary. It’s an extraordinary kind of grace that we experience. It’s not something that we do regularly. It’s something that we do from time to time for as a means of grace.
The other of those is fasting with prayer. We don’t do that every day. You might do that from time to time in order to spend a particular time of devotion to the Lord about a particular need or concern or in response to worshiping God in a particular way. But thanksgiving in the sense that he means it here is, the examples are from the Bible. The primary example that he gives is from the book of Esther when when God brings that great deliverance. And so what do they do at the end of the book? They have a time of celebration and thanksgiving to the Lord. And they point that as something that’s to be practiced year after year by the children of Israel. It’s an example of giving thanks to God for God’s mighty hand bringing a great gift and deliverance to Israel. Another example, he didn’t mention, but it is one that is appropriate for today because it’s the basis of Psalm 105. And that is when David has, the ark was lost, and David has pursued having it returned when the ark finally returns to Israel. Then David, in 1 Chronicles 16, appoints a group of people from the tribe of Levi to become the leaders of worship, and he writes this psalm. The whole point is to remember the extraordinary blessings that God has given to Israel and to his people.
The Sin of Ingratitude
And so I want us to think about this and think about Thanksgiving. First of all, you know, it’s not the focus of this sermon particularly, but I want us to think about how important Thanksgiving is for our daily life. We should be considering that it is crucially important. To fail to give thanks to God is certainly a sin that, it’s a sin of omission. You know, we tend to think of sins in categories. Here’s the big sins and here’s the small sins. And when James says, you know, if you know to do good and you don’t do it, that’s sin, a sin of omission. We treat that pretty light, don’t we? Because how many times do we know to do something and fail to do it? Something good. Well, this is something good, giving thanks to God. And we think, well, that’s a sin of omission. Maybe that’s not so bad. You know, this is one of the most serious sins in the Bible. One of the most serious sins in the Bible is to fail to give God recognition and thanks. You know, if we fail to do that, that’s the foundation of judgment. It’s the basis of judgment. It is to fail and fall short of the glory of God. We’re not glorifying God and the good things that He has done. It’s the very definition of sin.
in Romans 1, verse 20, when Paul starts writing the book of Romans, and he’s introducing that, and he talks about how nations fall away from God, and God’s judgment as the nations fall away, and why that is. And among the worst judgments that God gives is He leaves them to their sin, to the place where they he gives their mind over to it. So that they begin to think that evil things are what is good, and good things, the good things that God gives, they treat as evil. It’s a twisted mindset that God gives them over to. What brings about that judgment of a society or a nation or a culture or a people? Well, he tells us very clearly in Romans 1.20, he says that it’s very clear who He is really to everyone who’s been on this planet. He says, for since the creation of the world, God’s invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made. In other words, you look at this world around you and if you’re rational at all, you know that it didn’t just happen. Though there are people who, Say that. It’s reasonable. It’s a rational faith to understand that there is a God in heaven. It’s absolutely rational. Being understood through the creation. So they are without excuse. They’re denying that there’s a God in heaven. They’re without excuse.
And then it says this. For even here’s a people, a group of people and their forefathers, OK? So even though they knew God. They did not honor him as God. Or give thanks. But became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was dark. What’s the issue there? Failing to acknowledge to God the good things that he gives us. If we fail to do that, we are committing a very serious sin, a sin of omission, a serious sin. And yet, I have to say, it’s difficult to remember to thank God for everything. Why do people find it so difficult? Well, I think I think there’s a lot of reasons, but I think the biggest reason is that we tend to be prideful, which affects us in a couple of ways.
We tend to think that we deserve what we have. We have rights with God. We think we have a bill of rights with God. You know, we feel that we have a right to have good health. And if we don’t have good health, we think that our rights have been violated. We have a right to have a certain level of wealth and a right to the talents that we have. But it’s very clear that all these things are manifestations of God’s common grace, not something that any of us deserve. There’s nothing like that. There’s no good thing that we actually deserve. We don’t have a right to any of these things. We are sinners before God and actually deserving of His judgment.
But if you think that you have a right to something and you receive it, You’ve earned it. You don’t give thanks to your employer when you’ve worked really hard all week. I mean, I think that would be a very rare thing for an employee who works 40, 50 hours a week really hard. Every time he gets that paycheck to thank his employers for his generosity and giving him his paycheck. No, because you have a sense of having earned it. We fail to give thanks to God because we think that we have a right to this and we deserve it. And because we think we deserve it when we receive it, we’re not surprised or thankful. And so we fail to give thanks. That’s one reason.
Guidelines for Thanksgiving
It’s easy for us to get caught up in ourselves and forget to look to the Lord.
In the three verses that I read earlier, let me simply read these again and ask God to bless them to our heart. I might summarize this chapter in a moment, sort of, very briefly, but these three verses is what I want us to think about in particular.
David in the psalm writes,
“Oh, give thanks to the Lord. Call on his name. Make known his deeds among the peoples. Sing to him. Sing praises to him. Speak of all his wonders. Glory in his holy name. Let the heart of those who seek the Lord be glad.”
Let me ask God to bless his holy word to our hearts.
Father, we thank you for this beautiful, beautiful passage, which instructs us, commands us to give thanks to you, to sing to you, to praise you and to make known your deeds. We ask, Father, that as we reflect on this today, that you would guide our hearts and instruct us and teach us what you would have us, how we would to live, how we’re to live before you. Teach us how we are to live. And I ask, Father, for your mercy as we look at this, recognizing for myself that I have great failures that I need the blood of Christ to cover. And Father, I need the abundance of your Spirit to correct me and to make me new before you and to mend my ways before you. I pray that prayer for each of us and ask Father for your help and grace as we look at this this morning. Thank you for it. We pray in Christ’s name.
Well, in these few verses, David gives us guidelines for giving thanks to God. We are, first of all, to give thanks unto the Lord. We’re to call on his name. We’re to make known his deeds among the peoples. The fourth thing is to sing to him, sing psalms to him. The next is to talk of all his wondrous works. to glory in his holy name, and finally, to let the heart of them rejoice that seek the Lord. Now that’s seven things, and I’m not gonna preach a seven-point sermon. What I’m gonna do is focus these things, and I want to bring out the focus of these commandments that God has given us in this passage. and so that we can think about it perhaps in a practical and simple way.
The Direction of Praise
And the first category of this is, I want us to think of the direction of our praise and thanks. Thanksgiving is more than a feeling of gratitude. I think we can stop, too often we might stop short of actually giving thanks to God by simply getting caught up in the feeling of gratitude. Think of a parent who looks in on their little child, maybe a newborn child is a perfect example, and they see their baby sleeping in the cradle, in their bassinet that night, and they look at it, and their hearts are warmed, and they just feel gratitude. Well, that’s a wonderful thing, and that’s a right response. But you can stop with that.
That’s why it’s important for us to notice that when these verbs do take an object, or I guess an indirect object, we’re to give thanks to the Lord. We’re to call upon His name. It’s His deeds that are to be made known. we’re to look upward in giving thanks. It has to connect to God Himself. I think it’s very easy for us to get caught up with the gift, to truly appreciate it, and to not actually follow through in an act of worship, of expressing our thanksgiving to God. Now, maybe we do that by habit naturally, and I think many of us certainly do that. But how often do we fail to do that? And I think the right response is to make sure we are actually calling upon the name of the Lord, looking upward to Him. We’re to give thanks to the Lord and call on His name. We’re to sing to Him and glory in His holy name. And this is an emotional engagement, you know, to glory in the name of the Lord. So the caution here is to not stop short.
The story goes back a couple hundred years, I guess, of a woman who asked—his name was Richard Reynolds, and he was a wealthy British businessman. And he was known for his charity. He was very gracious in the money that God had given him by giving it out to people in need. And a lady came to him and asked for help for an orphan child. And he gave money very, very generously. And so when she got received that very generous gift from him, she said, “I will teach him when he’s old enough. I’m going to teach him to thank his benefactor.” And Reynolds stopped her. He said, “stop.” He says, “we don’t thank the clouds for rain. Teach him to look higher and thank Him who gave us both the clouds and the rain.”
It’s easy to stop short with the gift and be appreciative of the gift. We might not even do that. We might just assume that that’s, you know, take pride in the gift in ourselves. We’re to look to the Lord and actually give him thanks, to thank him in a personal, emotional way. It should it should touch our hearts when we look to him and praise him for the gifts he gives us, the everyday gifts. So the first thing in Thanksgiving is to turn our face upward, give praise and thanksgiving to God.
The Lord Jesus Himself did that. He would look to the Father, give thanks to the Father. You know, when He fed the 5,000, before when He broke the bread and the fish, He gave thanks and broke the bread. You remember that? And He does exactly the same thing when He feeds the 4,000. And at the Last Supper, He holds the elements and the elements that represent the sacrifice that he is about to make. And he thanks the Lord for the bread when he breaks it. He thanks the Father for the bread when he breaks it. He thanks the Father for the cup when he takes it. He gave thanks, the Lord Jesus. We should do the same.
The Proclamation of Praise
The first thing is we look upward. The second thing is we’re to look outward. We will look outward. The shift moves in the same three verses from God to people. And that’s something that I think is, we don’t expect to see. You expect that all the thanksgiving is gonna be here in the church or here in the sanctuary of the tabernacle. But it actually looks outward from there as well.
I think because we don’t expect it to say this, even when we read it, we can miss it. So I’m calling attention to it. But it says, make known his deeds among the peoples. The word people is the word, it’s the idea of the nations. The children of Israel are to take and make known in this public worship service that they’re doing, but even beyond that, make known the deeds of the Lord to the people around them, the people who don’t know the Lord. They’re to make known Him, they’re to praise Him. Part of the thanksgiving that they’re giving to God, part of the glory that they’re giving to God, they share with other people.
It’s like getting news that is so wonderful that you need to share it. You’re so overwhelmed with the joy of what God has given you that you can’t help but talk about it with people. It’s like, how many times do you read that in the Gospels when Jesus heals someone, and they just are overwhelmed with gratitude, and they go out and they tell everyone what Jesus has done for them. Even when he tells them not to do that, they do that. You know, they’re overwhelmed with joy over what God has done, and so they glorify His name. They tell Him what He has done. We’re to do that.
Talk of all His wondrous deeds. we’re to do this. This is exactly what this psalm is about. The psalmist traces the history, David traces the history of of Israel and God’s interaction with Israel from the call of Abraham, the protection of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob as they wandered through Canaan. He traces the He talks about how God sovereignly brought Joseph to Egypt so that in the time of famine the family could move to Egypt. That’s part of what you see in verses 16 to 23. And he talks about how the Lord prepared for the deliverance of Israel from Egypt by judging the Egyptians.
The Lord blesses His people. The Lord gave them leaders and brought great plagues on Egypt by His powerful word. And then as they sing this song in praise to the Lord, they rehearse how God delivered His people from bondage. and provided for them in the wilderness and gave them the promised land.” All these provisions of God. It’s an incredible history of Israel and God’s interaction with Israel bringing blessing after blessing and deliverance after deliverance. Redemption from slavery to the Egyptians and to all the struggles in the wilderness and then to the promised land and bringing them in. And all the focus in chapter 105 and Psalm 105 is on these acts of God and what God has done.
Here’s a God you can be proud of. That’s literally what that phrase means when it says, call on the name of the Lord. The idea is taking pride in God as you speak and evoke His name is part of that idea, part of the root idea of that word. That’s one thing that we can be proud of is God. We are to be proud of our God, who is glorious and who does wonderful and extraordinary things for us beyond anything we can comprehend. We’re to take pride in that God. We’re to worship Him. We’re to glorify His name. And we’re to do that among people. That completes the thing. You know, if God does something miraculous for us and we look around us and we see people who need similar miracles, shouldn’t we call Shouldn’t we let them know that there’s a God who does such things?
Like going to a doctor who actually is extremely helpful and helps you be cured of your disease. You find someone else who has that, wouldn’t you say, you know, I had that and I went to so-and-so. It’d be natural to do that. You’d want to do that.
God is gracious to us, been abundantly gracious. We absolutely need to share that with our neighbors who, what God has done. Our Thanksgiving isn’t finished. You know, when we’re at the dinner table and we say amen, it’s concluded when we go out and tell our neighbor what God’s done for us.
You know, we need to tell people of the redemption that we have in Christ. Those stories that David rehearsed here for Israel, and that they continually sang, whenever they sang this hymn of praise to God, it refreshed all these details of their history in their mind, so that they’re giving thanks again and again for these accomplishments that God has done.
The story didn’t end there. It goes on. It goes on to the coming of the Lord Jesus and the redemptive work that He has done for us. The Son of God, the incarnate Son of God, the God manifested in the flesh, enters into this world to take upon Himself the sinful punishment that we deserve. And He pays for that on the cross. That’s what God has done for us. That’s what we need to rehearse and sing about as we do, as we have this morning.
And it’s a glorious thing to think about all that God has done as the story continues. How many times in church history has His saints been delivered? with remarkable deliverances. Do we rehearse those and give thanks to God for those things? Do we remember them? We don’t. We would have to do work because we don’t have such songs, do we? Not many that remember all the blessings that God has given.
How about your own? The blessings that God has given you and the deliverances that you have. We need to have our own special thanksgivings like this coming Thursday, a time to celebrate God’s goodness and His graciousness.
My family were believers. We went to church every Sunday, but our thanksgivings weren’t particularly We would have a big meal and we would pray and give thanks to God. And occasionally, every once in a while, we would individually say what we were thankful for. We did those kinds of things. But the day really wasn’t focused particularly on the Lord. When I was a real little kid, it was focused on the Macy’s parade and seeing if Santa was going to show up again this year.
But it’s an opportunity. There’s a purpose in it. There was a time when people understood what a Thanksgiving was, and people turned their thoughts to God. And it was sometimes what should be made public. Today, in our culture, we privatize religion, whatever the religion is. And they say, nobody can really know for sure, so let’s keep it out of the public eye. But that is wrong. Our faith needs to be made public to complete, if no other reason, to complete our thanksgiving to God.
We need to tell people what God has done for us, and we should not be shy about it. Because we can’t separate praise from proclamation. If you truly value what God’s done, I think it’s absolutely natural that we’ll tell other people about it.
Joy & Hope
So the last thing is let the heart rejoice. That’s the commandment.
What happens when we combine upward worship and outward witness? Well, let the hearts of them rejoice that seek the Lord. Joy is the byproduct. of the cycle. Being thankful increases the joy of the gift. No, that’s absolutely true. It’s absolutely true. You know, if you receive a gift, you enjoy that gift. But when you actually give thanks to the person, say, the person that gave you that gift, then that increases the joy you have in what you’ve received. And it does even more than that. It increases the relationship that you have with the one who gave it. That completes the joy. It lifts it from, in the case of giving thanks to God, it lifts it from something that is just a material blessing to something that is spiritual when we express our thanksgiving to the Father who gave it, who gives every good and perfect gift.
And when we express what that’s, and thanksgiving, you know, gratefully, share that with other people, that increases our joy as well. And if those other people who are strangers maybe to Christ, hear what you have to say, touched by it, it can ultimately, radically increase their eternal joy. if through that seed God draws them to Himself.
So, real often we pursue things that we think might give us joy. But joy is what happens when you seek the Lord, when you talk about what He’s done for you, when you give glory to Him and do what we’re created for, giving glory to Christ.
You know, if you got a little stream of water and it gets blocked in some way and settles into a pool, and that pool isn’t allowed to flow, that little pond will become stagnant. And a Christian who’s only receiving never talks, never gives out what God is doing, can become spiritually stagnant. We’re to sing to God our thanksgiving. We’re to sing to God our thanksgiving and we’re to tell others. That’s what those commandments are. Sing to the Father, tell others. his wonderful deeds, and we’re to be thankful. We have so much to be thankful for. It’s unbelievable what a Christian has. We have strength to face difficulties, and a reason to give thanks to God, whatever our daily circumstances are. Whatever God brings, we know that it is from a loving and good God who orders things in His way, not ours. So we can give thanks whether we like what has happened that day or not, we can give thanks to God because God is good and He’s gracious to us. And whatever He gives is going to be the best for us ultimately, eternally. We can take joy in that.
Through the cross, what Christ has accomplished for us, through His resurrection, which gives us that resurrection life, we have received a hope that is extraordinary and eternal and can never be taken away from us, no matter what happens, and gives us a strength to endure difficulties in this life.
I don’t know if any of you remember Joe Bailey, but he was a columnist in Christianity Today back in the 60s. That was quite a while ago. He had a really interesting column. He was an interesting writer. He was very devoted to the Lord. He was a godly man, but he had a lot of grief in his life. He saw three of his children, young children, die. But he knew he had perfect hope in Christ, which helped him through all of that. The day after he and his wife buried their five-year-old boy who died from leukemia, Bailey went to give thanks to the doctor who had been so kind to them through the trial. And as he sat in the waiting room, the receptionist beckoned to him and whispered that a little boy playing in the waiting room had the same problem that his son had. So Bailey sat down next to the boy’s mother. They were far enough away from the boy so they could talk.
And Bailey said, “It’s hard bringing him here every two weeks for these tests, isn’t it?” He said that as a fact. It wasn’t a question.
“Hard,” she said, “I die every time. And now he’s beginning to sense that something’s wrong.” And her voice trails off.
“It’s good to know, isn’t it?” And he chose these words very carefully, “…that even though the medical outlook is hopeless, we can have hope for our children in such a situation. We can be sure that after our child dies, he’ll be completely removed from sickness and suffering and everything like that and be completely well and happy.”
“If I could only believe that,” she says, “but I don’t. When he dies, I’ll just have to cover him with dirt and forget I ever had him.” She turned back to watch her boy play with a toy.
“I’m glad I don’t feel that way.”
He didn’t want to say it, but he felt compelled to.
“Why?” This time she didn’t turn to look at him.
“Because we covered our little boy up with dirt yesterday afternoon, and I’m here to thank the doctor for his kindness today.”
She said, “you look like a rational person,” and she turned to look at him in his face. And she said, “you look like a rational person. How can you possibly believe that the death of a man or a little boy is any different from the death of an animal?”
And he goes on and he explains his confidence in the Lord and his hope that he has because of Jesus Christ.
You have that, do you not? If you don’t have that, you need that. Only Jesus Christ can give that. Only Christ can give us hope that goes beyond the temporary sorrows that we have in this life and looks forward expectantly to the eternal hope that we have in Jesus and the glory, to see His glory, to share in it. That’s what’s before us. You’ve given thanks for that lately. It’s a precious, precious gift.
Closing Prayer
Let’s pray. Father, when we think of all the little things You do every day that we need to give thanks for, that can be overwhelming. But Lord, when we think of the great things that we do, all the wonderful deliverances You’ve given that’s just reflected like in Psalm 105 and in the Gospels, All of that’s extraordinary. But Lord, how much more it is when we read that next Psalm, Psalm 106, where it tells us, that reminds us of each of these good things that you have done and how wickedly we behave. Father, to give us such precious gifts to us who do not deserve it. To do not deserve it, that’s beyond anything we can comprehend. Father, as we reflect on that, on Your graciousness in Christ, please lift our hearts up to praise You and help us truly to be thankful. I ask this in the name of our Savior, the Lord Jesus. Amen.
