The Sermon for Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 28th, 2024
The Lessons: Deuteronomy 8; Psalm 65:1-8; James 1:17-27; Matthew 6:25-33
The Text: James 1:17-27
The Topic: Gratitude for all God’s gifts
INTRODUCTION
On this Thanksgiving Day, let us remember that the intention of our first President, George Washington, and Congress in 1789, for our whole nation was the designation of a day of public prayer and thanksgiving to God for all his blessings, but primarily for the establishment of the United States of America as a nation, and for God’s intervention to secure victory for the USA in the Revolutionary War. President Washington knew that it was by God’s gift and grace that the United States came into being and its form of government established, and that the heroism and leadership of many in achieving this was also by the hand of God.
Today, many years later, we have many blessings for which to be thankful to God, and it is good that we have Thanksgiving Day, not as the only day on which to express thanks to God, but as an annual reminder to give thanks to God for all his gifts.
JAMES 1:17: GOOD GIFTS COME FROM GOD
St. James wrote that every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning (James 1:17). Though the planets and stars move in their orbits and revolutions, and even the sun casts different shadows depending on the time of day, with God there is no variation of his motive to give good and perfect gifts to people. His greatest gift to believers is the gift of rebirth through the Holy Spirit, by whom in Christ we have the newness of eternal life, and a relationship with God that lasts forever.
Among all God’s blessings and gifts for which we should thank him, we must also be thankful for all those people who have been a blessing to us in one way or another.
During the Depression, William Stidger was in a restaurant with friends who were all talking about how terrible things were: suffering people, rich people committing suicide, joblessness. The conversation got more miserable as it went on.
A minister in the group interrupted. “In two or three weeks I have to preach a sermon on Thanksgiving Day,” he said. “What can I say that’s affirmative in a period of world depression like this?”
Stidger felt the Spirit of God saying to him, “Why don’t you give thanks to those people who have been a blessing in your life and affirm them during this terrible time?”
He began to think about that. He remembered a schoolteacher who was very dear to him, a wonderful teacher of poetry and English literature who had gone out of her way to put a great love of literature and verse in him, which has affected all his writings and his preaching. So he sat down and wrote a letter to this woman, now up in years. It was only a matter of days until he got this reply:
My dear Willy,
I can’t tell you how much your note meant to me. I am in my 80s, living alone in a small room, cooking my own meals, lonely, and like the last leaf of autumn lingering behind. You’ll be interested to know that I taught in school for more than fifty years, and yours is the first note of appreciation I ever received. It came on a blue, cold morning, and it cheered me as nothing has done in many years.[1]
CONCLUSION
If such is the effect on one person who was thanked for the role she had played in the lives of others, think of how much the Lord rejoices when we thank him for all his blessings! We should give thanks to God especially for our salvation and for the gift of the Holy Spirit, but then also for all things, as we are urged in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians:
But be filled with the Spirit; Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
(Ephesians 5:18b-20, KJV)
Thanksgiving Day reminds us of what we should be doing daily – thanking God for all his gifts, which are good and perfect.
[1] Adapted from a quotation on p.450, Craig Brian Larson & Phyllis Ten Elshof (General Editors): 1001 Illustrations that Connect. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, Christianity Today International, 2008.