Unusual Scenes of Thanksgiving

Focus: When you feel like skipping thanksgiving, you need it the most. Today we learn how to overflow with thanksgiving in whatever scene we find ourselves.

I. Usual Scenes of Thanksgiving

Today we are looking at the Unusual scenes of Thanksgiving. Before we ponder some unusual scenes, let’s take a quick look at the usual scenes. When you think of Thanksgiving, if you are like me, you think of the usual scenes of Turkey on a Table laid out with a full course meal. There are some dishes that you might eat only once a year, like candied yams, and pumpkin pie, or chocolate cream pie. There’s always twice the food you can possibly eat. For me, feasting and family are the usual scenes that come to mind. So the usual scene 1 is. . .

From Grade school we are told about the first thanksgiving scenes. As parents we have watched thanksgiving programs with our children wearing those black construction paper pilgrim hats. These are usual thanksgiving scenes. We may come back to them in a moment. Before we do, let’s take a quick look at a couple of Unusual thanksgiving scenes.

II. Unusual Scenes of Thanksgiving

We will call them unusual because when you first picture them you will be hard pressed to understand why we are focusing on these scenes as exemplary Thanksgiving scenes. On the surface these scenes will seem to be the antithesis of what we usually consider to be joyful Thanksgiving scenes. Yet, I am convinced that at the heart of these stories is the real Biblical understanding of what it means to be thankful.

Scene 1: The first scene comes from the Old Testament. It is the familiar story of Job. Most scholars believe that Job is the oldest written record of the Old Testament. It is even older than the works of Moses. It deals with the age old question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Job has come to represent for us the epitome of suffering. At the very beginning of the story all of his children were killed, and he is facing financial ruin. If any person is justified in saying: Let’s just skip Thanksgiving this year it would be Job. Yet, in the midst of all of this immeasurable suffering this is what we read about Job’s response. We read it in Job 1:20-22

Job 1:20 through Job 1:22 (NIV) ²⁰At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship ²¹and said:

What kind of praise is this? Job is not “thankful” for what happened, but he worships, and he praises God even in tragedy. Here’s what Job teaches us: Tragedy IS a time for worship. The rest of the book of Job is about Job’s quest to understand, as matters get worse. All the human answers were not satisfying to Job. The only answer in such tragedy that finally was satisfying to Job, was a sense that God was bigger than the tragedies, and was still to be trusted. Job argues with God over the injustice. God finally reveals himself to Job. That encounter with God showed Job that even when it doesn’t all make sense, and even if everything is taken from you, the truth is that God is bigger than any tragedy, and that when everything else is gone God is enough.

In the second unusual scene, what I would like us to do is, first hear the words of Paul, the one who is giving thanks, then consider the unusual scene in which he gives thanks. Here are the words:

Ephesians 1:3 (NIV) Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

Here is a man who is overflowing with praise from his lips. Here is a man who considers himself blessed to overflowing with EVERY SPIRITUAL blessing in Christ.

Colossians 2:6 through Colossians 2:7 (NIV) ⁶So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, ⁷rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. [NASB “overflowing with gratitude”] [KJV “abounding therein with thanksgiving”.]

Here is a man who is overflowing with thankfulness, trying to teach the church How to Overflow with Thanksgiving. But you haven’t really considered the power of this yet. The unusual scene of thanksgiving here is this. Paul writes both of these letters while he is in a dingy Roman prison facing serious charges. Now he faces what surely seems to be a death sentence. In the midst of this situation Paul writes these words.

He literally isn’t sure whether he will be executed or released. In fact during the same imprisonment, he writes also the Philippian letter expressing that he isn’t sure which way it will go yet, but either way it will be good. If it is off with his head, well and good because that means to be with Christ. If he lives, well that would be good as well because he has more ministry he can do, and he is concerned for the churches. He isn’t concerned for himself, but for others. He says, “For me to live is Christ, to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21) This is thanksgiving that flows out of thanksliving!

Things seem very bad indeed for Paul. But this is only one of a series of mishaps that has occurred during his stormy ministry. He has been shipwrecked, beaten nearly to death, imprisoned, and even many of his fellow Christians are now openly opposing him. This guy is the guy who says, from the prison cell:

Philippians 4:4 (NIV) ⁴Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!

I told you these were going to be unusual scenes of thanksgiving. These are extraordinary scenes. But Paul wants these extraordinary scenes, these unusual scenes to become the USUAL scenes for Christians. The way these scenes become normal is that we live lives the way he described.

Before I go into an explanation of how to overflow with thanksgiving let us consider this. Are these scenes really that unusual? On the surface they may seem to be the antithesis of the usual Thanksgiving scenes but they are not.

The Pilgrims would not fully understand in their lifetime the reason for the suffering that beset them. The first official Thanksgiving Day occurred as a unique holy day in 1621--in the fall of that year with lingering memories of the difficult, terrible winter they had just been through a few months before, in which scores and scores of babies and children and young people and adults had starved to death, and many of the Pilgrims had gotten to a point where they were even ready to go back to England. They had climbed into a ship and were in that harbor heading back to England, ready to give up. It was only as they saw another ship coming the other way on which there was a Frenchman named Delaware, who came with some medical supplies and some food, that they had enough hope to go back and to try to live in the midst of those adverse sufferings. And yet they came to that first Thanksgiving with the spirit of giving and of sharing. [i]

Two years later, William Bradford, governor of the Plymouth Colony stated in 1623: “Inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as He has protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience; now, I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November 29th of the year of our Lord, one thousand six hundred and twenty-three, and the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor, and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings”. [ii]

A little over 200 years later, Lincoln had also learned how important it is to stop and thank God in the midst of great difficulties. It was Abraham Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War in 1863 who made this Thanksgiving proclamation: “It has seemed to me fit and proper that [the gifts of God] should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens . . . to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.” [iii]

Paul tells us that it is through a deep faith rooted in Christ that people have this kind of extraordinary overflowing thankfulness.

If you are not thankful, if your heart is not thankful with this extraordinary overflowing thankfulness, the reason for that is that you are missing the something from the foundation for thankfulness. Paul here gives us the elements that are foundational for such extraordinary thankfulness. Just look at the verbs.

Let’s look at what it means to overflow with Thankfulness. We have been doing work towards paving our parking lot. One thing that came up as we were discussing with the engineer is that water has to carefully routed on a parking lot. A catch basin might be required. What does a catch basin do. All the water goes into it, then leaves it more slowly, if it overflows. Here Paul is assuming something. We are that catch basin. And the blessing is such a down pour, the source so constant, that we can overflow with thankfulness. Be a catch basin, but not just any catch basin, an overflowing catch basin that is full to overflowing. We are to excel in thankfulness. Our catch basin isn’t big enough to hold it all. We are designed to overflow!--And overflow with blessing to others!

Scene 3: Rinkart:—NOW thank we all our God (hymn 556)

In our hymn books, Hymn 556 is a hymn that was as written in 1607 by a German by the name of Martin Rinkart. The name of the hymn is "Now Thank We All Our God.” In the year that Rinkart wrote that hymn something unusual took place. Over 6000 persons in Rinkart’s German village, including his wife and his children, died of pestilence. Yet, in the midst of that catastrophic social and personal loss Rinkart set down to pen this great hymn of praise: Now thank we all our God, with hearts and hands and voices. The Christian faith affirms that in the midst of everything--in death, in loss, in hardship--we are to turn to God in praise. [iv]

I want the remainder of the time we have together this morning to be a practical Thanksgiving workshop. I want to lead you through a time of thanking God for Common Blessings (overlooked?), Special Blessings (forgotten?), and The greatest blessing (ignored?).

III. Let’s Thank God for:

Common Blessings (Overlooked?)

· Thank him that you have unimpaired thinking ability, you can think, plan, and pray.

· Thank God for weather, for seasons, for the stability of our world. It rotates in 24 hours. It goes around the sun in 365 days. Its tilt on the axis is just perfect. It is precisely the right distance from the sun, and the moon.

Special Blessings (Forgotten?)

· We have all had special blessings. We maybe didn’t recognize them when they came. Those blessing were meant not only for the hour that they were provided but they were a pledge to you that God cares for you. We are to take time to remember these. Sometimes God gives us what we ask, just to let us know He hears, He cares, He just loves us. Memories of those precious answers give us strength through hard times. Thank him for his special blessings.

· Say this to God. “God, You delivered me then. You didn’t deliver me then to desert me now.”

· Say this also. “Lord forgive me for the Special Blessings I have long forgotten. Lord, I’m going to pay closer attention to your special blessing. I am going to take note and note it carefully that I may not forget them.”

The Greatest Blessing (Ignored?)

· What is the Greatest Blessing? Paul has already told us this morning. Jesus Christ is the greatest blessing ever given to us. “I Praise You my God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! You have blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.!”

· If you don’t have a sense for what these tremendous spiritual blessings are, let me encourage you to hear Paul’s teaching to us this morning: You need to “Receive Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, and be rooted and built up in him, and strengthened in the faith through some teaching.” Will you make a decision this morning to pursue Christ. He really is the Greatest Blessing.

· Let Jesus Christ know where you are at this morning. Thank Him for dying on the cross for you, and taking your guilt away, and washing you clean.

[i] Ron Lee Davis, "Rejoicing in Our Suffering," Preaching Today, Tape No. 74.

[ii] James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc, 1988) pp. 263-264.

[iii] http://www.plimoth.org/Library/Thanksgiving/thanks63.htm The living history museum of 17^th century Plymoth

[iv] Brett Blair, www.eSermons.com, November, 2000