Thanksgiving # 2

Thanksgiving # 2

3. Offer unto God, thanksgiving for your personal interest in spiritual blessings.

Thank God for your conversion. What were you more than others, that He should have chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth?

Thank God for enlightening and quickening you. When you sat in the region and shadow of death - the dayspring from on high visited you. When you had no more thought for God than a dead man, then he "made you alive in Christ!" (Eph. 2:1).

Thank God for pardoning and justifying you. 

Thank God for adopting love. "I will be a  Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty!" (2 Cor. 6:18).

Thank God for sanctification; for "though you lay among
 the pots, you are like a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold."

Thank Him for growth in grace. "The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree, and grow like the cedar in Lebanon."

Thank Him for the hope of perfection; knowing that "He who has begun the good work in you, will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ."

Thank Him for supporting grace in the prospect of death, for the promise of His presence then to enable you to conquer - for the hope of a glorious resurrection, and admission to immortal bliss!

II. The Manner of Offering Thanks to God.

1. Thanksgiving may be mental - as when we indulge admiring, adoring, and affectionate thoughts of God, or meditate upon His graciousness with pleasure and delight.

2. Thanksgiving may be vocal. "Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth may be compelled to speak." In private - in the family - in the house of God.

3. Thanks giving must be with reverence. It is praise to the Great I Am - to God, who is a Spirit, pure, infinite" (Nehemiah 9:5; Psalm 91:1, 2; 95:1-3.)

4. Thanksgiving must be with humility - as unworthy recipients, acknowledging the salvation of God. As prodigals, returned outcasts, miserable sinners - confessing salvation to be all of grace.

5. Thanksgiving must be practical. This is called a "showing forth the praises of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light." Tell others what He has done for you. Go, spread His truth - advance His cause. The people upon whom Christ wrought miracles did this. Paul, the persecutor, after his conversion, did this.

6. Thanksgiving must be ardent. The greatness of the blessings, demands fervent thanks. Life from the dead - translation from satan's kingdom into the kingdom of God's dear Son - deliverance from perdition to the hope of Heaven, etc. (Psalm 71:8; 138:1, 2).

III. Enforce the Duty of Thanks to God.

1. Thanksgiving is the command of God. It was so under the Levitical economy (Lev. 7:12); much more so under the Gospel dispensation; (1 Cor. 9:11; Phil. 4:6; Col. 2:7).

2. Thanksgiving is a striking evidence of spiritual vitality. It indicates sensibility - experience - love to God.

3. Thanks giving is delightful. (Psalm 33:1; 147). Delightful to feel - beautiful to behold.

Sweet is the work, my God, my King.

To praise Your name, give thanks and sing.

To show Your love by morning light.

And talk of all Your truth at night.

4. Thanksgiving is acceptable to God, and honors Him. (Psalm 50:23; 2 Cor. 4:15). God neither needs our services nor our songs - as He is all perfection, and an everlasting harmony to Himself, without the feeble notes that we can raise. Yet through Christ, He is well pleased with our imperfect praises. Where He has given His grace, the grateful heart is an instrument of music to Him; and He loves it to be kept in tune, and to sound forth His praises.

5. Thanksgiving is the precursor of praise to be offered in the celestial temple! Thanksgiving is the practice-tune, the rehearsal for the grand chorus of all the redeemed in Heaven! We are tuning our hearts here for perfect praise there!

When the Church militant shall be joined to the Church triumphant - O what voices, what songs of melody, what rapturous joys, will then be heard in Heaven to all eternity, when Christ shall lead the worship, and the praises that have been growing for thousands of years, shall burst forth, and be diffused abroad, and all creation echo to the song, "Glory to God in the highest!" This is what the saints are waiting for; that which they ardently believe and hope they shall realize!

~William Nicholson~

(The End)