to Colossians chapter 3, which you'll find on page 984 in your pew bibles. Colossians chapter 3. These few verses which we are about to read have a great deal to say. They remind us that Christian people are in a very real sense a holy that is set apart by God for His purpose, that remind us that Christians are also beloved, loved by God. And since these two things are true, that we're set apart by God and loved by God, Paul tells us that we need to live in a certain way. As he puts it at the beginning of verse 12, we're to put on a certain virtues. There are layers of these graces that we need to wear. First, there's compassion and kindness and humility. He also mentions that these are well matched by patience and a forgiving spirit. Christians need to be clothed in all of these things. And if we add to these love and peace virtues, which Paul emphasizes in these verses, Christians might even be fit to be seen and fit to be useful. Now, we could talk about any one of these virtues, couldn't we? But it turns out that Americans don't have a day called kindness day or compassion day or certainly not humility day. We do have a Thanksgiving day. And since that day is this day, and since Paul goes on to talk about Thanksgiving and how we need to have a thankful spirit. Let's turn to these verses, read them, and then think about thankfulness for a few minutes this morning. Put on, then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you. so you also must forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom singing songs and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we ask that you would use these few minutes and few reflections on your great word to teach us to order our thanks as we order our days. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, you've just heard in verses 15 to 17, Paul talking about thankfulness in three different ways. First of all, he simply tells us to be thankful. And then he tells us that we're to show our thankfulness, and he mentions one way in which we can do that. And then we're told to give thanks to God the Father through Jesus, in Jesus' name. Now, the tail end of verse 15 introduces our topic of thankfulness. This is one more of those virtues that the Scriptures call us to put on. We need to wear a thankfulness. Hopefully wear it so well that it becomes like a comfortable sweater, something useful. It's almost part of us in the way in which we respond, the way in which we act. Just listening this morning to all the thanksgiving that's been given makes it sound like giving thanks is really easy. Like this is sort of what we naturally do as a congregation. I'm not sure that's always the case, but we're very thankful to be thankful this morning. Given how many things there are to be thankful about, and given that we've probably missed a few items, in fact there's probably whole departments of thanks that we still haven't given, let's just pause for a moment to think even more about how good God has been to us. We've mentioned so many different things, but We could add so much to the list. How many of us have have gone hungry this last year? How many of us have even thought to to worry about shelter or clean drinking water or any access to education? How many of us have worried when we went to the voting booth that we would be able to cast a ballot without being hit by by thugs from the opposing party? None of these things even cross our minds. God is so good to us. We have a mildly reliable postal service, decent roads, even in Northern Virginia. And then when we come closer to home, we have just so many super useful single people in our church. We have marriages, many of which have grown stronger in the last year. We have a mostly healthy congregation, even though some of us have been through a lot this year. The Lord has shown his healing hand again and again, and we're just so grateful. We have children who are growing in abilities, who are growing into new clothes, who appear to be growing in grace. These are encouragements to us. God has been very good to us this year. And we have lost a member this year, in fact, this week. But we are still comforted and encouraged that this is a member who died in Christ with a strong profession. of what it was like to be a Christian woman and to live a Christian life. We have so much to be grateful for, brothers and sisters. Mention has been made of teachers. We have such able and willing Sunday school teachers and nursery workers, a cheerful and able secretary, excellent organizers for every event, elders who care about you. who care about the Lord, and deacons who are so thoughtful and willing to serve. We have so many different tastes of God's goodness to us. So many reasons to celebrate His compassion and His patience for us. When we're thinking, clearly, we are thankful for many of these things. And I suppose we'd be even more thankful for more of these things if we had more time. But it strikes me it might be useful to have some kind of ranking for thanking, some way in which to order our thanks. Given that there are so many things to be thankful about, where should we place the emphasis in our prayers? What should we be thinking the most about? Seems to me this morning that perhaps we can place the highest priority in our thanks where we place the highest priority in our prayers. At least we should be able to do that. Much of our thanks ought to be thanks for prayers that God has answered. And yet sometimes we're not very wise in our prayers. Sometimes we don't get the emphasis quite right. And so I think it's useful to to think about our thanksgiving with a few different categories. I think we should be most thankful for the things that cost the most. Cost the most to God and giving them to us. We should be most thankful for the things which are most necessary to us. What are those things? And we should be thankful for the things that God has promised to us and delivered to us. Now, I think we know right away that the things for which we should be most thankful are not the things which make our life most convenient. You know, dishwashers, telephones, fun films and some good food just can't make the top of the list. These are good things and we're thankful for them when we have them, but they're at most just sort of soft necessities. We can live life without these things. Certainly they're not the most important on a Christian's list. We need to be sensible. We wouldn't really have a right to complain if these things were taken away from us. These are hardly at the core. of the Christian life. I mean, just as a way of illustrating that, and a way of illustrating the fact that you all know that, I don't remember a prayer meeting where someone sort of thanked God for their iPhone or something like that. We just don't do that together. These are things we're thankful for with sort of a small tea. These are small pledges of God's goodness. There are also civic blessings, and these are much more significant. A decent road, strong police forces, good academic institutions, a strong economy when it's strong, a military that actually is responsive to the government that's over top of it. That doesn't happen in every country. We're thankful for those things. An electoral system that really works quite well. These are blessings. These are things we can pray for. These are gifts from God. They aren't gifts that he's promised to us. These are gifts that he just gives to us. So we're thankful for these gifts on this day. But we can say with Job, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. And if he were to take away these things, we would still say, blessed is the name of the Lord. There are also things which are much more dear to us, our health, our safety, our very lives. These are things we pray about, too, and how how should they rank on our list of things to thank God for? I think it's probably true that these things dominate our weekly prayer requests, they do dominate our weekly prayer requests here at Grace Church. They also usually appear on the on the charts of things for which people are thankful, whether they're Christians or not. A good health is something that people are conscious of, especially as they get older. But these are still not God's biggest blessings to us, even though we usually pray about them, it seems, more than many other things. They're important in this world, aren't they? But there's more than this world that Christians live for. And so these things, too, must not be at the top of our of our Thanksgiving list. Our horizons need to spread beyond these things, even though they're sometimes like mountains which loom before us. Ill health has that effect. We are thankful for good health and for our lives on this day, but even these gifts are are not the things for which we are most thankful for. As God teaches us to number our blessings and as we try and do so this morning, we should surely include the way in which he continues to work his grace in our lives and in our homes, our families. I do wish we actually pray more about this as a church and give more thanks and raise more petitions to God about these very things. But I admit it can be a little bit tricky. I'm just so grateful today that the Lord is helping my husband get control of his temper. That's a little awkward. And so I can see why sometimes we we might not want to say that. Just want to give thanks that we're arguing less around the dinner table. We don't always want to share that. So it can be a little awkward to give thanks about these things, but it probably would be safe. And to praise God that we're learning how to forgive one another as we've been forgiven. It probably would be a good prayer request to ask that God would love each other, help us love each other in ways that others can see and recognize and appreciate. To grow in grace. is one of God's great blessings. And sometimes I think we don't pray about these things together just because we lack the words. But let's give more thought to this as a congregation, because surely we should be more thankful for these blessings than many others. We're told that changing us, sanctifying us, making us more like Jesus Christ is actually one of God's purposes behind saving us. It's that important to Him. He gave us the Lord Jesus Christ. He offers us Christ through the work of Christ alone, because, as Paul explained to the Ephesians, he has work for us to do. So growing in grace and being useful Christians is important. And when we see that, we are thankful. And we give thanks to God for this on this day. But we still need to look higher. Now, if we're counting our blessings today, We must surely recall at some point in our time together that the scriptures place a huge premium on the blessings of a well-ordered church, a place where people can come to worship, a resting stop along the way for Christians, a school for sinners to learn the ways of their Savior, a family that loves us and care for us, sometimes even when people in our own family don't. These are treasures which we should rank very, very highly in our thanksgiving to God. And we've heard a thanks for all of these things today. We can be sure that in asking for these things, we also we're pleasing the Lord when we ask him for a well-ordered church, when we ask him for more love in this congregation, when we ask him to help make our worship a better taste of heaven. We know the Lord is pleased for these things. And yet, even here, we can't say the Lord has promised that He will always give these things to His people. Sometimes He places us in struggling churches. Sometimes God places His children in crippled, dysfunctional churches. And so we can't complain if the Lord gives us those difficulties. These aren't things that He's guaranteed to us. We can pray for them. We must be thankful for them. And yet, if we're looking for the thing for which we must give the most thanks, something which costs the Lord a great deal, something which is necessary to us, something which God has promised and will never take away, we still need to look further. In fact, there's only one gift in scripture from God that we're told is costly to him. There's only one thing that we're told is absolutely necessary for us. And it's the one thing that scripture promises from one end to the other. The gift that I'm talking about, of course, is a person, the one that scriptures call an indescribable gift or an unspeakable gift from God, the greatest gift that God has ever given and the thing for which we must give the most. And the thing for the one for whom we've already heard thanks this morning is the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the one who is promised almost from the very beginning of the world, certainly immediately after sin entered the world. This savior was promised to us. He's the one who's our hope. He's the one who is our salvation. He's been promised to us. And it's a very good thing that he was. Because no person in the right mind would want to stand before a holy God as we are. We are a problematic people. On so many different levels, we're tarnished, we're broken by sin, we're poor company for the God of heaven, as we are right now. We really do need to have someone represent us before the bar of heaven. We owe a great debt. We need someone who's able to pay that debt because we can't on our own. We should pay a penalty for our many crimes and how grateful we are that the scriptures reveals one who's called our advocate. The one who's called our surety, our down payment for all of our debts, the one who will pay them all. How grateful we are that we have one who whom we've been told has taken every every stripe, every every punishment that we deserve. And he has paid it all. And at what a cost, at what a cost for God to have met our needs and to have kept this promise. Because to save us, God the Father crushed his own son. Jesus Christ was punished in his body and he was punished in his very being with a load of sin, which he shouldered for us. Every one of those sins ours, not one of them his. He took the penalty that would have crushed us and it brought him to his grave. What a what a need we have. What a promise. At what a cost our Lord Jesus Christ came. And so let us add this to our Thanksgiving today. Let us thank God for Jesus Christ, our substitute, and therefore our Savior. If every other blessing was taken away from us today, this day, and if we still have Jesus Christ, we would still be able to count a great blessing. If He took away all that was dear, all that was dear to us, we would still have ample reason to praise God this day. Let this be our simple lesson on this Thanksgiving day. And since we have reason for thankfulness, let's pay attention to what Paul says in verse 16. Wonderfully, we're encouraged by God to show thankfulness by encouraging others. As the teaching of Christ dwells in us richly, not just his teaching and what he told us, but teaching about him were to wisely help and teach and admonish each other as occasion sees fit. And we don't need to do that in a prosaic way. In fact, we're told right here that one way we can encourage and bless one another is through song. And so let's do that before we end our service. Let's sing praise to God, which will also encourage and bless one another. Ultimately, whatever we do, whether it's in word or whether it's indeed, we want to do it when Thanksgiving, as Paul says here, through Jesus, through Jesus Christ, we give we give thanks to the father, but we do it in Jesus name because because he's our savior. Because he's the one who gave himself for us. It's in his name that sinners find salvation. So that's. That's something to think about on this Thanksgiving Day, let's be thankful for all things, but let's keep sight of the thing for which we're most thankful, the thing which is most costly, the promised savior who came once and will come again. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we ask that you would help us to live lives of thankfulness to you through the Lord Jesus Christ and because of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray, Father, that as we live lives of thankfulness, that we would thank you all most of all. not for the blessings which come because of Jesus, not because of the gifts you shower upon us, but because of Jesus Christ himself. Help us to give you thanks, God our Father, by the power of the Spirit, for our Lord Jesus Christ, both now and for all of our days. And it's in his name that we pray. Amen. Let us sing to God's praise. Hymn number 26. Tell up my soul the greatness of the Lord. Please stand. O God, my soul, the greatness of the Lord, Come and have mercy on me, my dear Jesus. I wish to be a prophet of the earth, In that I may worship my God in his arms. Tell of my songs, your praises and your name, May well be my daily praise of heaven's love. Let mercy flow from age to age, O saints! We shall live by the work of God as he doth. Till our flags fall, our faith is not in sight, God is there and so there is light. God is love, and love's our fortune-teller, God is the God of glory and divine. Tell us, my soul, the glory of His way, And with Him our salvation's return. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. Amen. It's a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. So, I don't know. I don't know. So, I'm going to go ahead and get started. Thank you very much. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. So, Thank you.