Thank you, Jesus. Thank you for turkey and stuffing and pie like Granny made.
Thank you for football all day long. Thank you for family, even for that one sibling that drives us nearly insane. Thank you for the Thanksgiving Song and for when Saturday Night Live and Adam Sandler used to actually be funny. Muchas Gracias.
We are going to spend the next week or so in serious and perpetual thankfulness. This time of year, we are more thoughtful of that thankfulness. T-week is here.
We do have much to be thankful for in our lives, in the lives of our families and in our congregation. But sometimes we don’t say “thank you” in the right way. Sure, we pay lip service to it in our worship time. Our family prays “thanks and grace” before enjoying a meal. We lay down at night and in our haze of exhaustion, we offer up thanks for making it through another day of work, school and family life. And in painful pinches, we thank God because once again He mercifully yanked us free of some crazy mess of sin and circumstance (a crazy mess that we ourselves probably caused and deserved).
Psalm 100 is a scripture of that kind of praise and thanksgiving. We should know it well:
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing! Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name! For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.
Wow! What a great God we serve and He is so deserving of our thanks. But when we “give thanks” do we really stop and thank God from the right position and with the right attitude?
The Hebrew word for thanksgiving in this passage has a much deeper meaning than just a flip “thanks.” Here, true thanksgiving involves confession, praise and gratitude, all rolled into one. Psalm 100 not only is about saying the words, but being caught up in the presence of the God as we confess our sin and lowly position and give God praise for who He is, high and exalted. He is our God. He made us. He takes care of us. He gives us mercy and grace. He is the famous one and faithful to the end.
As we worship this week together, let us be mindful of what it means to be thankful. Let’s make a joyful noise together and match our words of thanksgiving with attitudes of humility, confession and genuine gratitude. Thank you, Jesus.
Here’s the set list for this week.
Thanks (McGruder) - A simple chorus of thanks. As we are called to worship, we call out to God our simple “thanks!”
Your Worthy of My Praise (Ruis) – Our thanksgiving should put us in the right position as we bring our praise to God. This song is a congregation favorite and we’ve added a chorus of “I surrender all” at the end as we give the all of our praise offering.
The Solid Rock (Bradbury) – Our gratitude should be rooted THE source – Jesus, the Solid Rock. This great hymn of faith and dependence reminds us of great reasons to be thankful. One lyric in the third verse gives is such a great picture of the confidence we have of Christ working in us- “When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay.”
Here I am to Worship (Hughes)
Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus (Lemmel) – True gratitude fixes our focus on His work on our behalf.
Before the Throne of God (Bancroft) – We fall before His throne and are thankful for God’s work of redemption. This good news both haunts and encourages us to true thankfulness, confessing our miserable shortfalls and thanking God for looking instead on our substitute, the perfect Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Our depravity was born and suffered upon Him. Thank you, Jesus.
