Thanksgiving
Pastor Tom challenges us to consider not only what we are thankful for, but who we are thankful to.
Transcript:
Today's reading is from Luke, chapter 18, verses 9 through 14. To some who are confident of their own righteousness and look down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable. Two men went up to the temple to pray. One, a Pharisee, and the other, a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed, God, I thank you that I am not like the other people, robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even this tax collector.
I fast twice a week and I give a tenth of all I get. But the tax collector stood at a distance, he would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, God, have mercy on me. I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
When Thanksgiving approaches, it is fairly common for people to express what they're thankful for. And you all have done some of that today, yourself. Religious and non religious people alike will say things like, I'm thankful for my health. I'm thankful for my job. I'm thankful for my spouse, and this is all well and good, but I do think we could improve our celebration of this holiday with a slight change.
Instead of asking ourselves, what am I thankful for? We could ask, who am I thankful to? You see, if we say who we are thankful to, it will naturally follow that we will offer what we are thankful for. I could say, I'm thankful for my wife, but really only be thankful to myself thinking, well, Tom, you are quite the catch.
We know otherwise. If instead, if I instead say I'm thankful to my wife, I'll then tell you the countless ways I must thank her for her patience, for her support. For the delicious meals she makes, and on, and on. I could say that I'm thankful for my health, but only be giving thanks to myself for my healthy habits.
If I say that I'm thankful to God, I will tell you, among other things, that I'm thankful for the good health he has given me. We all know that the Thanksgiving holiday originates with the pilgrims and Native Americans coming together. But it only took its present form under President Abraham Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War.
And the words from Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation are striking when it comes to making this distinction between being thankful for and thankful to.
He made this proclamation on October 3rd, 1863, and I'm not going to read the whole thing to you, but I've taken a couple of selections. And again, we're right in the middle of the Civil War here. He says this, The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies.
To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source, from which they come. Others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and even soften the heart, which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.
And he goes on to list some various blessings that they've experienced despite there being a war going on. And he picks up and continues by saying, No human in counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out, these great things. In other words, he's saying we can't give credit to human beings for figuring these things out, for these blessings remaining.
Instead he says this, They are the gracious gifts of the most high God who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. And it seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent father who dwelleth.
As Lincoln makes clear here, Thanksgiving is a day to give thanks to God for his mercy, for his sustaining care. And when, when Lincoln talks about God showing mercy to the American people, he's not just using, that word loosely because he understands that while there's good in the American nation that we also have sins on our record that they were reckoning with at that time that God was reckoning with them at that time because of the practice of human slavery.
And there was other wicked things going on just as there's other wicked things going on in our own day. And yet God was showing his mercy. His blessings in the midst of that conflict.
We must be diligent in giving thanks to God for his mercy, for His care. And it's so easy for us to forget, as Lincoln says, to take these things for granted, to give credit to ourselves rather than to God. And the parable that we've heard from Luke 18 highlights this. Jesus gives this parable to those who feel they are self sufficient, those who are confident of their own righteousness and look down on everyone else.
And so he presents to us these two figures, the figure of the Pharisee and the figure of the tax collector. Now, the Pharisee was a person who is devoted to obeying God's law to the nth degree. Now that sounds good, but as Jesus exposes through his ministry, they created laws on top of laws, and they became consumed with superficiality.
Just having all the appearances of righteousness without the heart of righteousness. But in terms of the original impulse, there is some good there, because as you will recall from the story of the people of Israel, they had wandered into rebellion. They had exchanged the one true God for false idols, and so they had gone into exile in Babylon.
And then God brought them back to the land. And even as they were back in the land, the Greeks tried to lead them astray. But there were those Jews that held their ground. And the Pharisees are amongst that group that are concerned with holding their ground. So a good impulse. But they became consumed with their own efforts.
In taking pride in what they themselves were able to accomplish. So you have the Pharisee. And then you have the tax collector. Now, none of us likes taxes. And, uh, yeah. But the tax collector in that day was an especially disreputable figure because he was someone that had basically gotten in bed with the oppressors of the Jewish people, with the Roman Empire.
It would be like, imagine if China somehow took over our country and excised taxes from us and your neighbor decided, hey, I'm going to be the one to go excise taxes. You probably wouldn't like that guy very much. Cause you feel like you're allying yourselves, yourself with our enemies. That's how most of the Jewish felt about these tax collectors. And beyond that, these guys tended to be cheats. They took more than was actually required because in fact, that's what the Roman government had established. That was the way that they were to actually make money. They just overcharge a little bit. Well, give an inch, they take a mile.
So you have these two men, and they've both gone to the temple, and they each have a prayer to offer. Jesus first tells us of the prayer that this Pharisee offered. In verse 11 he says, God I thank you that I am not like other people, robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. The Pharisee, by all appearances, is offering thanksgiving unto God.
And you're like, alright, this might be okay if he said, But for the grace of God, I go thereto, God, I know that I could be just like them. But your mercy has made it so that I'm not like them. That's not what he says. He says, I thank you that I'm not like these other people. And then he goes on in verse 12 and says, I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.
So, it appears that the Pharisee is giving thanks to God, but in fact he's doing nothing of the sort. He's thanking himself. He's congratulating himself because he is pure. He is upright. This is what he has achieved above his fellow man.
This is a warning to us because we are equally capable of speaking out of two sides of our mouths where we show up on a Sunday and we say, thank you God for everything that you've done. I know that I'm only who I am because of who you are. We could say all that and yet during the week we can hang our hat on our own accomplishments.
We can live lives of pride and lives of judgment on all those who are around us. Such that if someone disrespects us, well, we'll show them. Because we've earned everything that we got.
We must be careful that we're not like the Pharisee. This brings us to the tax collector, and his prayer is much, much different. First, we just notice his posture. They've gone to the temple, but unlike the Pharisee, the tax collector is not drawn near. He's standing off at a distance, because he does not feel worthy to draw near to God.
Remember, the temple was no mere structure, but this was the place of meeting between God and His people. The tax collector did not feel worthy to come before God's presence. And we notice that he's beating his breasts. His soul is anguished because he knows he's so unworthy. He just prays a simple prayer.
He says, God have mercy on me, a sinner. That's it. God have mercy on me, a sinner. And Jesus comments following this, He says that He is the one who left justified because God will exalt the humble and He will humble the exalted. Now we ask why is that? Why is it that God will exalt the humble and humble the exalted?
It's because those who would exalt themselves give no credit to God, give no true thanksgiving to God.
In a certain way, they believe that they could be God themself, because they think that they can live up to his perfection. And what Jesus does over the course of his ministry is expose that lie. That none of us can live up to the perfection of God, none of us can live up to the life of Christ. So we have some, some bad news here, but the good news is that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.
That whoever comes to Him and believes in Him will be saved and will be redeemed and restored if they just believe. So that's the good news. But is that what God desires? Is that recognition of, I can't exalt myself because there's nothing to exalt. There's nothing that I have that is due to me. I have no praise due to me.
Nothing that I have is a deserved reward. Everything is mercy. Everything is grace, and this is what the tax tax collector recognizes that if he's going to receive anything from God, his daily bread, his salvation, any of it, it's all by God's mercy.
This brings us back to again thinking about Lincoln in our country, he recognized that because of our sins, we didn't deserve the good things that we received, and yet we received mercy, and so he invites the country to give thanks to God. You see, the gospel is an invitation for you to give thanks to God, because it's a recognition of what God is doing, rather than what I am doing.
When we come and believe in Jesus Christ, we say, I'm done with entrusting, I'm entrusting in my abilities, in my performance. And instead, I am trusting in Jesus Christ and what He's going to do. So that, not only for my salvation, but for anything that we do. Whether it's in our job performance, professionally.
Whether it's something that we do together, collectively, as a church. It is no credit to us, because it is not by our power. But by the power of God that these things come to pass that these good things are realized you see what you are thankful for Doesn't say as much as who you were thankful to. The Pharisee was thankful. But he wasn't really thankful to God. He was thankful to himself for his own exalted status. Until you see yourself the way that the tax collector saw himself, you too will drift into an egocentric Thanksgiving, giving yourself a good old pat on the back.
That only comes to an end when you realize that you literally can't do anything to save your life. The life we have, we cannot keep. The life we know we should live, we never do live. In testifying to this experience, Paul points us to our only hope in an exclamation of thanksgiving. In Romans 7, verses 24 through 25a, he says, What a wretched man I am, who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death.
Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord. That we live, that we can have hope is no thanks to us. It is thanks to God who in his patient mercy sustains us so that we might be redeemed in Jesus Christ. It is by Jesus Christ the humble are exalted. It is by Jesus Christ that the sinner receives mercy.
Through that simple and honest cry. God have mercy on me, a sinner. He will gladly give you this mercy in Jesus Christ when you call on Him. Just as He has gladly given you every other good thing. God has given you earthly goods. And He will give you the everlasting good found in Himself. Just cry out to Him.
God cannot be blamed when we do not ask. He must be thanked. Because it is from Him that we receive every blessing. Above all, new and everlasting life in Jesus Christ. Let us pray.
Dear Father,
have mercy on us. Have mercy on us. Because we are, we are sinners by nature, Father. We have no right to draw before your presence on our own accounts. Have mercy on us, Father. Father, we give you thanks because you have, in fact, shown us your mercy. Because you sent your Son so that we might draw near. So that by believing in him, we might be adopted as your sons and daughters and receive grace in our hour of need, Father, continued grace, daily grace, Father, because we still do wrestle with sin.
We still do mess up Father. We confess that we have no basis to exalt ourselves. And so we come before you humbly thanking you because you've given us grace. Far more than any one of us deserves, both materially, Father, and spiritually. Help us to live, Father, with an attitude of thanksgiving.
And that, in receiving your mercy, we would be filled with your own generosity. So that we would give up to others freely, just as you have given freely to us, your Son, Jesus Christ. So that we might be saved. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Hey there, Pastor Tom here. I hope you enjoyed this sermon I offered to Rockland Community Church. Rockland Community Church is located at 212 Rockland Road in North Scituate, Rhode Island, just around the bend from Scituate Public High School. We invite you to join us this Sunday as we continue our sermon series looking at the Bible's account of Abraham. It's our joy to welcome you into our community.
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)