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The Sermon for Thanksgiving Day, November 27th, 2025
The Lessons: Deuteronomy 8; Psalm 65:1-8; St. James 1:17-27; St. Matthew 6:25-33
The Text: Deuteronomy 8
INTRODUCTION
Frederick Buechner tells how he came to a profound sense of gratitude while he served in the US Army:
One winter I sat in army fatigues somewhere near Anniston, Alabama, eating my supper out of a mess kit. The infantry training battalion that I had been assigned to was on bivouac. There was a cold drizzle of rain, and everything was mud. The sun had gone down.
I was still hungry when I finished and noticed that a man nearby had left something that he was not going to eat. It was a turnip. When I asked him if I could have it, he tossed it over to me. I missed the catch, and the turnip fell to the ground, but I wanted it so badly that I picked it up and started eating it, mud and all.
Time deepened and slowed down. With a lurch of the heart, I saw suddenly that not only was the turnip good, but the mud was good too, even the drizzle and cold were good, even the Army that I had dreaded for months was good.
Sitting there in the Alabama winter with my mouth full of cold turnip and mud, I could see at least for a moment how if you ever took truly to heart the ultimate goodness and joy of things, even at their bleakest, the need to praise someone or something for it would be so great that you might even have to go out and speak of it to the birds of the air.
– Frederick Buechner: The Sacred Journey. HarperOne, 1991[1]
GRATITUDE TO GOD FOR ALL HIS KINDNESS AND GOODNESS
To this point of humble gratitude to God for all his fatherly care, God intended to bring his people, the nation of Israel, as he led them through the wilderness to the promised land. He was leading them from worse things through hard things to better things. In this narrative in Deuteronomy 8, we are reminded of the great lessons of the past that should bring us to a sense of profound gratitude to God. The Lord speaks through Moses to the whole nation of the purposes of their journey through the desert. One aspect of this hardship was that they would thereby remember all the journey by which God had led them through the wilderness in the course of forty years, and that He was humbling them and proving their character, to know what was in their heart, whether they would obey his commandments, and whether they would be truly loyal to him and grateful to him (Deut. 8:2).
The reason they suffered hunger and were fed by the Lord on manna was so that they would learn that man does not live on food alone, but by every word that God speaks (Deut. 8:3). The way through the wilderness was a way of God’s discipline, like the discipline with which a father treats his son (Deut. 8:5). For this discipline, and for the Lord’s preservation of his people, they should be grateful.
A substantial portion of Deuteronomy 8 contains warnings to Israel not to forget God when they begin to prosper in the new land that God has given them. They are warned not to start turning to other gods to worship them instead of worshiping the one true God.
WARNINGS TO GOD’S PEOPLE TODAY
As Israel was commanded to do, God’s people must remember in humble gratitude all the way by which God has brought them even to this day, and show their thankfulness by the way they live out their faith. Prosperity is the gift of God as well as the result of hard work. Deuteronomy 8:17-18 warns even the most diligent of workers that the power to get wealth is given by God in faithfulness to his covenant love for his people.
CULTIVATION OF GRATITUDE
The Lord Jesus Christ, in his teaching in Matthew 6:25-33, goes beyond the idea that the power to get wealth is given by God. He teaches that Christian disciples must not make even the basic material necessities of life, such as food and clothing, a priority, but rather prioritize seeking the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Then God will provide them with the things they need (Matthew 6:33). The Lord knows that preoccupation with material pursuits and material wealth will lead people to worship false gods, or treat material wealth as if it were all important, leading them away from true gratitude to God, the Giver of all good things.
CONCLUSION
Instead, by depending more on God for all we need, and by doing the work He gives us to do, we cultivate our relationship with God and our gratitude to him, as we submit ourselves to the discipline of continual praise and thanksgiving for all that God has done for us, all He has given us, and the whole way by which he has led us. In this way, however our circumstances may change, God will give us the grace to remain thankful.
Thanksgiving Day is not the only day in which we should give thanks to God, but by God’s grace at work through the provisions and laws of the USA, we have this annual reminder to be thankful for the journey on which God has brought us safe thus far, and to give God thanks every day of this journey, for without his grace we could neither have begun it nor even now continue on it.
[1] Quoted on p.358, Craig Brian Larson & Phyllis Ten Elshof (General Editors): 1001 Illustrations that Connect. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, Christianity Today International, 2008.