The Revealings of Thanksgiving

Sermon Title: The Revealings of Thanksgiving

Good News Statement: God reveals to us our hymn of grateful praise

Preached: Sunday, November 26, 2023 at Dogwood Prairie UMC & Seed Chapel UMC

Pastor Daniel G. Skelton, M.Div.

 

Scripture (NRSVUE): Colossians 3:15-17 Today’s scripture reading comes from the words of the Apostle Paul, who writes to the people of Colossae about living in the newness of Christ—“set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth…and have clothed yourselves with the new self.” Our scripture reading is Colossians Chapter Three, Verses Fifteen thru Seventeen. May the hearing and understanding of this scripture add a blessing to your life.

The New Life

 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. ¹⁶ Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. ¹⁷ And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

 

For the Beauty of the Earth, by Folliot S. Pierpoint (1864) in The United Methodist Hymnal

“For the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies, for the love which from our birth over and around us lies. For the beauty of each hour of the day and of the night, hill and vale, and tree and flower, sun and moon, and stars of light. For the joy of ear and eye, for the heart and mind’s delight, for the mystic harmony linking sense to sound and sight. For the joy of human love, brother, sister, parent, child, friends on earth and friends above, for all gentle thoughts and mild. For thy church, that evermore lifteth holy hands above, offering up on every shore her pure sacrifice of love. For thyself, best Gift Divine, to the world so freely given, for that great, great love of thine, peace on earth, and joy in heaven. Christ, our Lord, to you we raise this, our hymn of grateful praise.”

This is the Word of God for the People of God; And all God’s people said, “Thanks be to God.”

 

 

Introduction:

In 1864, Folliot S. Pierpoint, a graduate of Queen’s College, Cambridge, wrote a hymn titled For the Beauty of the Earth. The original composition of this hymn consisted of eight stanzas or verses by which paint a picture of God’s creation through the lens of gratitude. Today, The United Methodist Hymnal, printed in 1989, lists only six stanzas—merging stanzas together. In other hymnals, this hymn has been further shortened to only five stanzas and only four stanzas. According to umcdiscipleship.org as well as the Companion to the United Methodist Hymnal by Carlton R. Young, “Each stanza paints a picture of gratitude embodied in some aspect of God’s creation: the earth (stanzas 1 and 2), the senses (stanza 3), “human love” (stanza 4), the church—in the original, “thy Bride” (stanza 5), and the gift of God as manifest in Christ (stanza 6).

Listen to these words, copied from The United Methodist Hymnal, “For the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies, for the love which from our birth over and around us lies. For the beauty of each hour of the day and of the night, hill and vale, and tree and flower, sun and moon, and stars of light. For the joy of ear and eye, for the heart and mind’s delight, for the mystic harmony linking sense to sound and sight. For the joy of human love, brother, sister, parent, child, friends on earth and friends above, for all gentle thoughts and mild. For thy church, that evermore lifteth holy hands above, offering up on every shore her pure sacrifice of love. For thyself, best Gift Divine, to the world so freely given, for that great, great love of thine, peace on earth, and joy in heaven. Christ, our Lord, to you we raise this, our hymn of grateful praise.”

This hymn is our reminder of just a few things that we should be thankful in our life by which God has given us as a gift. This hymn suggests that we should be thankful, to be in an attitude of giving thanks for His creation, our ability to experience life through the senses, the overwhelming feeling to feel loved, to belong to a church that lives in the present but strives for the future, and embraces, embodies, and experiences the manifestation, the presence, of Christ in our life. Simply put, this hymn, from 1864, reveals what Thanksgiving reveals to us, as Christians and followers of Christ. Thanksgiving reveals that our hymn of grateful praise is a hymn of creation, fallenness, redemption, and freedom. This is what God wants our hymn of grateful praise to consist of, but what hymn of grateful praise are you singing in your heart today?

 

Body:

It’s not too often that we get an extra Sunday before Advent. Typically, the Sunday after Thanksgiving is the start of the Advent Season—the season of which we prepare our heart and mind for the arrival of Jesus Christ. The season where we wait for Christ to be born in a manger—in a feeding trough—in Bethlehem. And in this season we allow ourselves to be connected to the perplexness of Mary, the doubt of Joseph, the innocence of the Shepherds, the curiosity of the Magi, and to have the angles remove our fear. In most circumstances, we go from giving thanks, then transition into the hustle and bustle and wonderment of the Christmas and Advent season. However, this year we have been gifted with an extra Sunday to unwind from the Thanksgiving holiday and then spend the next day’s preparing for Advent. With this extra Sunday, what are we supposed to do?

A rendition of this question was asked during an American television game show created by Mark Goodson, which features two families competing against each other to name the most popular answers to survey questions. The game show is called Family Feud, and the topic for a particular show was, “Name Something People Do On The Day After Thanksgiving.” The survey says, “On the day after Thanksgiving, people typically shop, sleep, eat leftovers, put up Christmas decorations, clean up, watch football, and start a diet.”[1] Did you do any of these things the day after Thanksgiving? I usually eat leftovers, think about Christmas decorations, eat leftovers, maybe watch some football but fall asleep on the couch, and eat some more leftovers. But this year, I did something different.

As I sat on the couch at my in-laws house, in a food coma, before the day picked up any motion, I thought to myself, “The day after Thanksgiving is a great day to relax and not do much of anything. But the Sunday after Thanksgiving is a great day to ponder what Thanksgiving reveals and how Thanksgiving is truly the day we need to prepare our hearts and minds for the upcoming Advent Season. As I sat on that couch, I realized four things that Thanksgiving reveals; and the survey says, “Thanksgiving reveals that our hymn of grateful praise is a hymn of creation, fallenness, redemption, and freedom.”

Created For Thanksgiving:

First, God created humanity for gratitude. He created you and I to give and receive gratitude. You exist to give God thanks in all circumstances with a grateful heart, as you make a joyful noise, serve Him, and enter His gates and courts with praise and thanksgiving in your heart (Psalm 100:1-5). He created you to honor Him by giving Him thanks.

As he describes in his letter to the Romans what’s gone wrong with the world, the apostle Paul gives us this glimpse of the giving thanks in the created order. Paul wrote in Romans 1:21, “[F]or though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless hearts were darkened.” The people of Rome failed to give God thanks by ignoring the fact that their creation, their existence, was part of God’s plan (Jeremiah 29:11), a part of who God was, is, and always will be. They took things for granted and lived a life in the dark with “senseless hearts” guiding their ways. We see this same senseless heart in the book of Genesis when God created Adam and Eve: they were told not to eat from the “tree of the knowledge of good and bad” (Genesis 2:17), but what did they do…they ate from the tree of knowledge. They ate from the tree of knowledge of good and bad suggesting that they knew more than God. Adam and Eve, much like the Romans and much like us at times, took things for granted and didn’t give God the proper thanks for their existence. They disobeyed God instead of “trusting in God with their whole heart” (Proverbs 3:5).

Thanksgiving reveals our need to be thankful for God’s creation: for our existence, for His breath of life that lives within our very lungs, and for the realization that we must do whatever we can to not live a life with a senseless heart but live a life that is filled with the love and grace of Jesus Christ. We must honor God by giving thanks for His creation.

Fallen from Thanksgiving

Second, we all have failed miserably in appreciating God as we should. We have fallen from thanksgiving. In her book on gratitude, Ann Voskamp gives memorable expression to the failure of the first man and woman—and the devil before them—to rightly experience and express gratitude. Voskamp states, “From all of our beginnings, we keep reliving the Garden story. Satan, he wanted more. More power, more glory…. And he sinks his venom into the heart of Eden. Satan’s sin becomes the first sin of all humanity: the sin of ingratitude. Adam and Eve are, simply, painfully ungrateful for what God gave… Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren’t satisfied in God and what He gives. We hunger for something more, something other” (One Thousand Gifts, 15).

In the Gospel of Luke, we are told by Jesus that we are to remove ourselves from the hunger of always wanting more. Luke tells us when quoting Jesus, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15). Greed, one of the works of the flesh and characteristics of Satan, is what draws us away from being thankful. Wanting more when we already have enough causes us to fall away from thanksgiving. Seeking to achieve more while knowing that “God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8), causes us to stumble in our faith and sin. And God knows we are much more than greedy people: we are people of thanksgiving and blessing. As Paul notes in Philippians 3:8, Christians are thankful for all God’s gifts, especially His eternal gifts, and especially the surpassing value of knowing his Son (Philippians 3:8).

Thanksgiving reveals our tendency to fall away from God, to sin and not be thankful. Thanksgiving reveals an invitation to return to God, to ask for forgiveness of our sins, and to be grateful for the many gifts and blessings He has bestowed upon us. Thanksgiving is our time, as followers of Christ, to not fall from Christ but to, as James tells us, “Humble [ourselves] before the Lord, and he will [lift us] up” (James 4:10). Thanksgiving reveals our need to rise from the ashes and to be made new in the image of God.

Redeemed by Thanksgiving

Third, God himself, in the person of his Son, Jesus, entered into our thankless world, lived in flawless appreciation of his Father, and died on our behalf for our chronic ingratitude. It is Jesus, who has manifested the perfect life of thankfulness: an example that we should all strive to live by. If you’ve ever tracked the texts where Jesus gives his Father thanks, you’ll know it’s quite an impressive list.

For example, Matthew 11:25 (as well as Luke 10:21) notes, “At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” John 11:41 state, “So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me.” Returning to Matthew, he notes when describing the feeding of the four-thousand, “he took the seven loaves and the fish, and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds” (Matthew 15:36). Lastly, in the earliest recorded scene of the Last Supper, we read in Luke 22:17-20 (also Matthew 26:27 and Mark 14:23 and Acts 27:35 and 1 Corinthians 11:23-24), “Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he said, ‘Take this and divide it among yourselves, for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.’ Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.’” Jesus is not only God himself but also a thankful human. The Son of God not only died to forgive our failures in giving God the thanks he’s due, but also lived the perfect life of appreciation on our behalf toward his Father.

By living out the example of Christ in our live—by being thankful—we learn that thanksgiving reveals our need to seek redemption through the thankfulness of Jesus Christ. Thanksgiving reveals the reality that God has redeemed you, He has set you free. God does not want you to live in the kingdom of darkness but live in kingdom of light with thanksgiving in your heart knowing that God was with you yesterday, He is with you today, and He is going to be there tomorrow. Thanksgiving reveals our ability to be redeemed—to be forgiven of our sins, to be washed in the blood of the lamb, to be delivered into salvation and love, and to be given a new life through the cross. Thanksgiving is our thankful redemption in Jesus Christ.

Joyful for Thanksgiving

Finally, by faith in Jesus, we are freed to enjoy the pleasure of being thankful. This freedom comes from realizing that it is because of Jesus that we have the ability to be thankful in the first place and that from this freedom we can be joyful and rejoice. Thanksgiving reveals a life of leaping and life of rejoicing. Rejoice in the Lord! I don’t know about you but when I say the word rejoice, I want to leap—I want to leap for joy. The joy that is down in my heart (where?), down in my heart, wants to leap out of me and be shared with others. We have to think of our joy like a cheerio in a bowl of milk. No matter how hard you try to sink a cheerio, it doesn’t sink. No matter how hard people try to sink your joy, remember that with Christ in your heart, your joy is unsinkable. So leap for joy! And give thanks to God in all circumstances, even when life isn’t fair and things are against you, because His steadfast love endures forever. Give God thanks. And when you give God thanks know that your rejoicing is a sign of your freedom in Christ.

The Apostle Paul encourages Christians in several of his letters to have lives characterized by a freedom of thanksgiving. He writes in Colossians 1:11-12, “May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, so that you may have all endurance and patience, joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.” In the following chapter of Colossians, Paul tells the people, “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” We are to be abound in thanksgiving because we have been given strength to overcome our sins, power to walk and not grow weary, endurance to run the race, patience to outwit our temptations, and joy to uplift our spirits. Because of our freedom in Christ, we are abounding in thanksgiving—moments and opportunities to feel blessed.

Later on, Paul shares with the people of Ephesus, “giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ…” (Ephesians 5:20). Then Paul reminds us in 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” Thanksgiving reveals our joy. Thanksgiving reveals our freedom. Thanksgiving reveals our want to live a life of joy surrounded by God’s blessings, Christ’s grace, and the Holy Spirit’s peace. Leap for joy because that’s what God does every time you lean on Him and you say, “God I need you.” Thanksgiving is how we experience our joy for and freedom in Christ.

Thanksgiving reveals our Newness

This leads us to revisiting our scripture passage for the day. The Apostle Paul, who writes to the people of Colossae about living in the newness of Christ—“set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth…and have clothed yourselves with the new self” teaches us the importance of giving thanks. Paul writes, “And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:15-17).

Three times in this text we are called to give thanks. We are called to be thankful, to sing psalms and hymns with gratitude in our heart, and to give thanks to God the Father. God needs us to simply be thankful for what He has given us in our life—the bad and the good times, the valleys and the mountain tops, the sadness and the joy, the pain and the healing, and the sorrow and the peace. God needs us to live with a heart of gratitude and not sin—to be a source of love and light and hope for those in our life. And God needs us to give Him thanks throughout our days and throughout our lives. I know you can do those things and so much more.

These verses also conclude Paul’s invitation to be made new, to set aside the old, and to live in the newness of Christ. From within this newness, we experience a thanksgiving that gives praise for belonging to God’s creation, we embody a thanksgiving that removes us from our fallen nature, we embrace a thanksgiving that grants us redemption, and we express a thanksgiving by which fills our life with joy and sets our hearts free. But in order to receive such an invitation, an opportunity to be made new, we have to be thankful—we have to accept what God is revealing to us through His thanksgiving. We need to know that God truly needs us to give thanks unto Him. Through God’s thanksgiving we reveal our hymn of grateful praise as we give thanks the way God intended for us to give thanks—for His creation, with redemption in our heart, with joy and freedom in our step, and newness on our mind.

Conclusion:

In 1864, Folliot S. Pierpoint wrote a hymn that revealed the true meaning of Thanksgiving. Pierpoint wrote a hymn of grateful praise that gives thanks for God’s creation: the earth, the senses, human love, the church, Jesus Christ, and the gift of God as manifest in Christ. Pierpoint’s hymn is our building block for revealing thanksgiving in our life, and God has gifted us an extra Sunday to do just that as we prepare for the arrival of His Son on Christmas day.

God has given us each a hymn of grateful praise. This hymn of grateful praise consists of belonging to God, being lifted up from our fall, seeking forgiveness and being redeemed, leaping for joy that we are set free, and knowing that each and every day we have been given the wonderful opportunity to be made new. Every day we can be thankful for something or someone. Every day our heart is filled with gratitude. And every day, we need to give thanks to God the Father for helping us live a life of thanksgiving by practicing a life that continually, in all circumstances, give thanks. The Psalmist writes in Psalm 118:24 that says, “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Let us be glad, let us be thankful, knowing that today is the day that the Lord has made. The beauty of the day is not that it is new, but that we are being made new. The glory of the day is not that it marks a change, but that we are being changed. When we enter his gates with thanksgiving in our heart and his courts with praise, we are made new and we are being changed.

Many people will spend the days after Thanksgiving, as Family Feud surveyed, “shopping, sleeping, eating leftovers, putting up Christmas decorations, cleaning, watching football, and starting a diet,”[2] but I invite you to think about what Thanksgiving reveals to you. How does Thanksgiving prepare your heart for the Advent Season? We all have been given a hymn of grateful praise that reveals our thanksgiving, but what is in that hymn that fills your heart with wanting to give thanks? “Christ our God, to Thee we raise; This our hymn of grateful praise.”

Let it be so…

 

Closing Prayer:

Let us pray: Dear God of Thanksgiving, we pray today that you reveal to us our hymn of grateful praise, and that from this hymn we fill our heart with gladness knowing that we belong in your creation, we are risen from our fall, we are set free, we are redeemed, and we are made new. O Lord, help us and guide us to reveal thanksgiving in our life today and every day. And may we continually give thanks in all circumstances as we spend the next few days preparing our heart for the Advent Season. Amen.

 

Benediction:

What is your hymn of grateful praise? How will you continually reveal with others what Thanksgiving means to you? May the Lord bless you and keep you; May the Lord make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you; and May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace (Numbers 6:24-26). In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit go forth living a life of thankfulness. And all God’s people said, Amen. Amen. Amen.

 

 

[1] Family Feud Info, https://www.familyfeudinfo.com/question.php?id=106227

[2] Family Feud Info, https://www.familyfeudinfo.com/question.php?id=106227