All right. Howdy, WCC. Somebody said, howdy. I like it. It's rare. Well, Thanksgiving is this week. So I'm going to talk about gratitude Thanksgiving today. So we're gonna take a break from 2 Kings. We'll actually pick it up in January. We'll continue going through 2 Kings. So today we're gonna think about thankfulness, gratitude, and the big idea for today is that gratitude increases joy. Gratitude to God increases joy. So if you'll turn to Psalm 136, Psalm 136, we'll get there in just a second. We're gonna look at a number of Psalms this morning, because the Psalms are just filled with thankfulness to God. So we're gonna be thinking about gratitude, thankfulness, and what I want you to see and think about, first of all, is how much of our lives is influenced by what we look at, by what we look at physically and by what we look at with our mind's eye, where we fix our eyes. If you stare at your phone all day, your brain gets shaped by hot takes and outrage. If you constantly stare at your bank account, your retirement account, your investments, your heart rises and falls with numbers on a screen. If you stare at your pain all day, if you stare at your suffering all day, your world just ends up shrinking down into your own suffering. So in a normal week, I would ask, what are your eyes fixed on? It's a huge question. Because what we look at, again with our physical eyes and with our mind's eye, what we look at shapes what we love, what we hate, and the decisions we make. And this brings us to gratitude. Because biblical gratitude is this, and I'll talk more about it in a second, but it's faith intentionally looking to God's grace and then responding to God's grace with thanks. Okay? So gratitude thankfulness is this, saying, in everything that's going on in my life, good, hard, confusing, whatever, in everything, I'm going to deliberately look at what God has done for me in Jesus Christ, and I'm going to give thanks. That's what gratitude is. And this is not just a nice add-on. Gratitude, thankfulness is central to the Christian life. So these are some very typical Bible verses that talk about giving thanks. We've got a slide on it. One of them is Colossians 2. Again, I'll just go through these quickly because I want you to see. There's just tons of these, but I just want you to see a couple of them. Colossians 2, 6 and 7. Therefore as you received Christ Jesus the Lord so walk in him rooted and built up in him and established in the faith just as you were taught abounding in thanksgiving." So this is about after you receive Christ as your Lord walking in him, that means living your life, rooted, built up in him, union with him, established in the faith, all this and then Paul sums it up by saying abounding in thanksgiving. The Christian's life should be one abounding in thanksgiving. 1 Thessalonians 5.18, very simple command, give thanks in all circumstances. Give thanks in all circumstances. And then he says, you want to know what the will of your life is? Well, one aspect of God's will for you is this, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. So gratitude, being thankful. is God's will for his people. It's one part of his will for our lives. So again, gratitude is central to the Christian life. So here's where we're going this morning. First, I'm going to talk about what is gratitude. I think this is really helpful. What is gratitude? Why we should be grateful to God, a second. And then third, is the main thing I'm going to talk about is how gratitude increases joy. Okay? So first, what is gratitude? We got a slide on it. This is my definition. Biblical gratitude is faith intentionally seeing God's grace and responding to this grace with thanks. Okay, so I want to expound on this. It's faith intentionally seeing God's grace in your life and then responding to this grace with thanks. Here's what I mean. It means looking around at your life and seeing God's goodness, his grace, grace is undeserved favor. So anything in our lives that we look at where we see God's grace in our lives, we look for those, we're on the lookout for God's grace, we see it. Then we respond to that with thanks to God, okay? That's what biblical gratitude is. So this is Psalm 136 verse 1. Look at Psalm 136 verse 1. You can just keep the definition up there, guys. Psalm 136 verse 1. This is the psalm that talks about his steadfast love endures forever. You can see it every single time through this psalm. At the end of every verse, the psalmist will say, his steadfast love endures forever. And a lot of it is thanks. So we're just looking at the first verse. It says, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever. So this is gratitude. This is gratitude, giving thanks to God. And notice, it is a response. It's give thanks to God for. There's a reason we're giving thanks. So the giving thanks is a response to something. In this one, why are we told to give thanks to God? For he is good. He is good and his steadfast love endures forever. So the question is, how do we know God is good? We know God is good through faith. The Bible says that God is good. How do we know that God's love endures forever? Because the Bible says that to his people, God's love is always enduring, it's steadfast. So we know that from the Bible and we believe that by faith. Faith is simply believing God. That's all it is. He says it and we believe it. So faith is believing God. So with eyes of faith, We understand that God is good, that the Lord is good. We're looking for grace in our lives and this is one aspect of God's grace, understanding that the Lord is good, that his steadfast love endures forever. So we see God's grace in this aspect of our lives and our response to this grace is to give thanks to him. Biblical gratitude is faith intentionally seeing God's grace and responding to this grace with thanks. That's exactly what the psalmist is saying to do. See God's goodness and love and then respond to it with thanks. In this verse what the psalmist is doing is he's intentionally seeing God's grace in the form of God's love. Then the psalmist is responding to that with thanks, being grateful. I'll say this about gratitude, emotions should be involved in gratitude, they should but it doesn't begin with emotions. The joy that we have should result when we understand about God's love for us but it doesn't begin with emotions. It begins with faith, faith intentionally seeing God's grace in his life and then responding to this with thanks. So again, this is gratitude. Turn with me to Psalm 75, so flip over to the left a little bit to Psalm 75. Again, we're just thinking about what is gratitude. Psalm 75 verse one, here it is again. These are all over the Psalms about thankfulness. Psalm 75 verse one. We give thanks to you oh God, we give thanks and here's the why, right? There's a response. Why do we give thanks? For your name is near. Why else do we give thanks? We recount your wondrous deeds. So the psalmist is saying we're looking around for God's grace and where do we see it? We see it because his name is near. That means he is near. He is near and we're using our minds to remember his deeds, to recount his deeds. So we think about God's work in scripture, what he has done in the Bible. We recount those deeds, we also recount God's gracious deeds in our own lives. So we have eyes of faith to think about how God has worked in history and in our own lives. We see God's grace in that and then we respond to that by giving thanks. Okay, so again, this is biblical gratitude. It's having eyes to see God's grace and then responding to that by faith, by seeing his deeds and then responding to that with gratitude. So that's number one. What is biblical gratitude? Number two is this. Why should we be grateful to God? Why should we be grateful to God? It's very simple. Because everything good in my life is a gift from God. Everything. A gracious gift. Grace is undeserved favor. Everything good is an act of grace from God. It's a gift. We've got a slide on it, I've just got two verses. James 1.17, simple phrase but so profound. Everything good in our lives is a gift from the Father above. Everything, no exceptions. 1 Corinthians 4.7, I love this, what Paul says. He asks a question, you have something, and he says, what do you have that you did not receive? So our tendency is to say, I'll work for this, this is mine. And Paul says, no, what do you have that you did not receive? Everything you have, you have received it from God. And then he says, if you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? So a follower of Jesus Christ understands again that everything good in my life is a gift from the Lord. This is his grace. And this applies not just for God's people, God's common grace goes to all people. The Bible talks about the rain falling on the just and the unjust. God pours out his common grace on all people. But he pours out his salvific grace, his saving grace on his own people. But his everything good that anybody has is a gift from the Lord. And that's why we should have hearts of gratitude. That's why we should be grateful to God. The opposite of this is a sense of entitlement. And this is to me, this is the hallmark of our culture, a sense of entitlement. I deserve this. I'm entitled to this. I have a right to this. Folks will talk about rights speech or rights talk. I have a right. I have a right to this. I have a right for you to give me this. This is so huge in our culture. It's so common, this belief that everybody has a right. I'm entitled to something. But the Christian says that everything good in my life is a gift from God. Everything is from God. Even this, even if I've worked for something, right? If I have worked for something, it's still a gift because where do my abilities come from? It comes from God. Where does my even desire to work? There are some people who don't have a desire to work. If you have a desire to work, then that comes from God, right? It's all gift. So again, a Christian understands that everything is a gift from the Lord. Whatever abilities I have, whatever opportunities I have, everything is a blessing that is in my life as a gift from God. And when that conviction really sinks in, the result is a heart of gratitude, of thankfulness, not entitlement. So this is why we should be grateful because everything we have is gift. So gratitude is not an option for the Christian. Gratitude is essential. If we want to grow into the type of people that God wants us to be, then we must be grateful people because gratitude is one of the main gears that the Holy Spirit uses to grow us. Okay, so that's number two. Why should we be grateful? Number three, this is what I'm going to spend the bulk of the sermon on, is this. Gratitude increases joy. Gratitude does a number of things. It brings glory to the Lord. It fights anxiety. It does a bunch of things in our lives. But the one I want to focus on today is how gratitude increases joy. Why am I saying that gratitude increases joy? Gratitude increases joy because it forces you to notice grace in your life that you were blind to. Gratitude forces you to notice God's grace. Turn with me to Psalm 100. Turn to the right, Psalm 100, it's a short psalm, it's great to memorize, it's only five verses. And in this psalm, I want us to notice the connection of gratitude and joy, okay? Psalm 100, starting verse one. Make a joyful noise. to the Lord, all the earth, joy. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into his presence with singing. Know that the Lord, he is God. It is he who made us and we are his. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name for the Lord is good, his steadfast love endures forever and his faithfulness to all generations. So one theme of this psalm is joy, verse one, make a joyful noise. Verse two, serve the Lord with gladness so joy is there. Another theme is gratitude. Verse four, enter his gates with thanksgiving. Give thanks to him. And again, how do we do this? How do we do this? By having eyes to see God's grace in our lives. And this is done by faith. We see God's grace in this Psalm. And notice the grace here in Psalm 100. None of this, this is awesome, none of this is dependent on your circumstances. If you're a believer this aspect of God's grace is for you no matter what you're going through. OK. Look at verse three. This is God's grace and it is always true. The Lord is God. He made us. We are his. We are his people. We're the sheep of his pasture. We have eyes to see this grace by faith and this is always true for us. So we have eyes to see that the Lord is God, that he made us, he made me, he made you, we are his, I belong to him, we belong to him. We're his people, we're the sheep of his pasture. Psalm 23, Jesus is the great shepherd. So we have eyes to see all these things by faith. We see this grace that is always present with the believer. So I have eyes to see, and then in response, I give thanks to him. I'm grateful, I have gratitude. And this leads to joy, okay? So we wanna focus on God's grace in our lives and respond to that with gratitude. And this applies too to the people in our lives. I want to talk about this for a decent amount of time because in verse five, it talks about, about God's goodness and love. And one of the ways that God shows goodness and love to his people is through other people in our lives. That's one of the huge ways that God shows grace to us is by the people he brings into our lives. And Paul's going to talk about that. And we'll look at one verse, but I want you to think about this. Our tendency is to focus our minds on people who have wronged us. Our tendency is to focus our minds and think about people who are critical, people who are mean. This is usually what we do in our free time. Normally, if our mind is just drifting somewhere and we're thinking about some person, a lot of times we're thinking about the people who have done us wrong. or gotten on our nerves or whatever, okay? This is where our mind goes. If you get, if you do something and you get 10 compliments and you get one criticism, what do you think about? Probably what you think about the most is the criticism. If you're doing some mindless task, as I said, who typically you're driving in your car and you're thinking about people. Oftentimes, we will think about the people who are doing us wrong, doing our family wrong, getting on our nerves, doing something to us that we don't like, right? That is where our mind usually goes. Do we think about Do we think about when our mind just wanders, do we think about people who are a blessing to us just automatically? I hope sometimes you do. I hope your mind goes to God's grace in your life by people who are a blessing to you. But I'm guessing that most of the time it'll go to people who get on your nerves, who have done something wrong. That's where most of us go is the people who have made us angry specifically. And there's a reason for it. It's because anger and outrage get our attention. They feel immediate. Okay? News programs understand this. Politicians understand this. Social media folks understand this. That anger gets your attention. If you see two social media posts, and one says this, here's something beautiful and encouraging. And another post says, look at this horrible thing these idiots are doing. What are you probably going to click on? You're probably going to click on the one that makes you mad. It feels more urgent. So this is the way we do in our own lives. Naturally, we tend to spend lots of times thinking about things that make us angry. We do the same thing with people. We tend for our minds to drift to things and people that make us angry. You probably give a lot of mental energy to people who have hurt you, done you wrong, or make you angry. Narcissists understand this. Narcissists are highly critical and one of the reasons they're so critical is to get you thinking about them, to give your mental energy to them. But think about it, there are also people in your life who are kind and encouraging. They're gracious gifts from God. When you're doing some mindless task, as I said, how much mental energy do you spend time thinking about the wonderful people in your life and thanking God for them and praying for them? Probably not enough. That'd be my guess. Remember, biblical gratitude is faith intentionally seeing God's grace and responding to that grace with thanks. I'm going to ask you to try to do this with the people in your life. Instead of thinking about people who make you angry or done you harm or anything like that, train your mind. to look for God's grace in the people in your life who are encouraging to you, who love you. Spend time thinking about them, how they're gracious gifts from God. Have eyes to see those people in your mind's eye. Then respond to God's grace in gratitude. This is what the Apostle Paul would do. We have a slide on it in Philippians 1. Listen to the way Paul talks. And notice the gratitude, the thankfulness, he remembers these people, and there's joy involved. Look at this. Philippians 1 and 3 and 4. Paul says, I thank my God every time I remember you. His mind goes to people who are encouraging, loving to him. He says, in all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy. He has eyes to see God's grace in his life for people who love him and encourage him. Then he responds. with thankfulness and the result is joy. I always pray with joy. So gratitude increases joy. While preparing for this sermon, I've been doing this. I've been conscious because I realize I'm very bad about this. The sermon has helped me. If it doesn't help anybody else, it helps me because I'm bad about this. I spend a lot of energy thinking about people that are doing foolish stuff or harmful or whatever. I just do that. And in preparing for this sermon, what I've started doing is being intentional. And instead of focusing on people who are critical, I started thinking about people in my life who are encouraging and loving. They're gracious gifts from God. They care about me and my family. They care about this church. There are a lot of people in this room right now. who are encouraging and loving to me. They are gracious gifts from God. And so I'm starting to think about those people. I picture them in my mind's eye. I'm on the lookout for them in my mind. Then I respond to that grace by thanking God for them and I pray for them. And you know what the result is? I'm more joyful. I've been more joyful this week because I've been practicing this and I'm not giving mental energy to critical people or narcissists or mean hurtful people. Try this. Try this. This is what God wants for his people. He wants us to be abounding in thanksgiving, right? Try this and you will see how God grows your joy. The thing is, joy is impossible if you're blind to 90% of the mercies in your life. Joy is just impossible. But when you're thanking God, you're training your mind to scan for grace instead of grievances and your joy grows. Your joy grows, not because life suddenly gets easy, but because you finally started to notice how surrounded by grace you already are. And this leads to joy. Okay. That's one way gratitude leads to joy. Gratitude also leads to joy because it fights coveting and discontentment. Gratitude, fights, coveting, and discontentment. We recited the New City Catechism this morning about the 10th commandment. And it talks about being content. Don't covet, right? Being content. Coveting happens when you want something that doesn't belong to you, it belongs to somebody else. You want it. But God has said, no, this is not for you. At least right now, no, this is not for you. So when you covet, you're greedy, you're not content. You want something. Being ungrateful, not being thankful to God, this is where coveting grows. An ungrateful heart, this is where discontentment grows. When you don't give thanks to God, when you look around at what others have and you resent it, why does God give them that and not me? I want that. I deserve that. I have a right to that. When you don't practice gratitude, you envy what other people have and you end up coveting, you end up wanting, and you end up with discontentment. And that is soil for sin. I can tell you that. That is fertile soil for sin when you're coveting and you're not content. And our culture actually promotes this to no end. Not only through products and commercials, you need this or whatever, even social media, right? Scrolling through social media is like a coveting buffet. It is like an all-you-can-eat coveting buffet. Look at their vacation. Look at their house. Look at how happy they are. Look at how much money they have. Look at their spouse. Look at their kids. And if you scroll without gratitude, your heart's going to say, I deserve that. Why not me? Why don't I have that? And this lack of gratitude will feed coveting. This lack of gratitude will feed discontentment. And your lack of gratitude to God will end up making you miserable, absolutely miserable. So how can you fight coveting and discontentment? Through gratitude. having eyes to see God's grace in your life and then responding to that with thankfulness. So gratitude grows you in contentment. Gratitude helps fight coveting because gratitude again forces you to look around in your life and remember God's specific ways of showing you grace. So how about this? You're on the lookout for God's grace and you thank him for the prayer he answered last month. You thank him for that. You thank him for the encouraging text you got from a friend. The temptation. How about this? You thank God for the temptation you did not give into this time. You're grateful to God for that. How about you've had a crazy day but in the middle of that day you have a moment of peace. That's you're seeing God's grace in your life so we can thank God for specific ways that he's poured out his grace to us. Being grateful also means this, we're thankful for the giver not just for his gifts. When you live with a grateful heart you're saying God you're enough, you're enough. Turn with me to Psalm 73. Psalm 73 near the end of the psalm. Psalm 73, look at verse 25. This is so good. Psalm 73, 25. Whom have I in heaven but you, Lord? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Who have I in heaven but you, Lord? There's nothing on earth that I desire besides you. When you have a grateful heart, you're affirming, God, you're enough. You're all I need. You can thankfully confess that I deserve nothing, right? You know what I deserve is God's judgment. That's the only thing I deserve. I deserve nothing. But in Christ, I have everything. Christian, in Christ, you have everything. And the best thing God can give us, he's given it. You know what it is? Himself. That's the best gift God can give us. So when you practice thanking God, we thank God not just for what he gives, not just for the gifts, but for the giver. We thank God for himself, for his attributes, his holiness, his sovereignty, his wisdom, his nearness, his love. When you repeatedly thank God for who he is, your faith becomes more solid. Your faith becomes more solid, your faith is less fragile because it's anchored in the unchanging giver, not the changing gifts. And as a result, you're more content, right? And when you're more content, this posture of gratitude undercuts so many sins. When you're content about who God is, what he's done for you, when you're content with this, it undercuts so many sins. Greed, for example. Contentment, gratitude undercuts greed. Pornography. Gratitude and contentment undercuts pornography. Comparison, bitterness, all these things. Gratitude to God fights all these things. And as I said, the greatest gift that God can give us is himself. The greatest gift the Father can give us is being our dad. The greatest gift that the Lord Jesus Christ can give us is himself. Being our savior, our king. The greatest gift that the Holy Spirit can give us is himself dwelling within us and he has done that for those who are in Christ. So thank God not just for the gifts but for the giver and when you're thankful it just fights all sorts of sins. So gratitude fights discontentment, gratitude increases joy. The opposite is also true. If you're blind to God's grace in your life, if all you see in your life are the problems and you've gotten into the habit of focusing on the bad things in your life, If this happens, if you're blind to God's grace, you're not a thankful person, then the result is misery. The result is unhappiness. You're not a joyful person. An ungrateful person is an unhappy person. I've met so many people, including Christians, and shame on us, but I've met so many Christians who constantly complain about their lives. There is a place for crying out and complaining. A third of the Psalms, something like that, are Psalms of lament, right? So it's okay to cry out to God. But if all we do is complain about our lives, this shows that we do not have eyes to see God's grace in our lives. And it is a shame. I remember when I became a Christian, I just assumed everybody was going to be happy like me because I just got saved and I walk in a church and it was filled with miserable people and I just didn't understand what was going on. How can you have God's grace? How can you have the Lord Jesus Christ and constantly complain? It's incessant. Shame on us. This should not be for God's people. And what those people have done, and you can see how you can get into the habit, you get into the habit of just focusing on the bad things in your life. And that you can become blind to God's grace. Okay, so if you're struggling with unhappiness, God is calling you to make a change. By faith, have eyes to see God's grace in your life. Be on the lookout. It takes work if you're not used to it. But you can be intentional, you can look for God's grace in your life, and then you can respond to that with thankfulness to Him. And the result is joy. Think about people that you know who are grateful people. They're joyful people. They're happy people. They're content. They're settled in who they are. They know that the Lord is there with them. They know that God is the greatest gift. They're happy, grateful people. They're encouraging. They love people. They reach out. This is the way that grateful people are. This is what I want for us, church. All right, I'm going to wrap up. Remember biblical gratitude. Is faith intentionally seeing God's grace and responding to this grace with thanks? Gratitude fights coveting. Gratitude fights discontentment and gratitude increases joy. And if you realize, yes, I complain a lot, I grumble, I'm discontent. The answer is not just to try harder to be cheerful. That's not the answer. Instead, be on the lookout for God's grace in your life and respond to that grace with gratitude and watch God work. Because as you fix your eyes on the Lord, and as you fix your eyes on His grace, your joy is gonna deepen, your contentment with the Lord will deepen, and Christ will be more glorified in a thankful life. Amen? Amen. All right, let's pray together. Lord, we do thank you. I'm so thankful for you, Lord. This church is thankful for you. Thank you for your word. Thank you for the Psalms. They're just filled with Psalms of thanks, the Psalms of the prayer book of the Bible. We're called to pray these things. Thank you that you've given us this. I do pray, God, for my friends here that you would give us eyes to see your grace in our lives. Please, Lord, help us with this. I know it can get into a bad habit of us just focusing on the hard things in our lives, especially when we're going through trials, and in part it's very understandable, and yet you call us to something different. You call us to a greater privilege of seeing your grace in our lives, Lord. So please help us with that. Please, Holy Spirit, help us to fix our eyes on Jesus Christ, how awesome he is. Jesus, you are glorious and awesome, and I pray that we as your people would see that And we would respond to that with praise and thanksgiving. So we love you. Thank you for your love for us. Let us be grateful, thankful people. And as a result, let us be content with where you have us. Let us be content and let us be joyful. And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.