Please turn with me to Ephesians Chapter 5. We'll depart from our exposition of the Book of Romans for one Sunday to share with you on a special topic since it's Thanksgiving coming up this week. Before we read the text, let's once again pray. Father, we pray that Your Word would be a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. We confess our insufficiency to both speak and hear rightly. We look to You, Lord, to open Your Word that we might behold wondrous things from it. In Jesus' name, Amen. Our text, Ephesians 5, 17-20, Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not be drunk with wine in which is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I direct your attention to verse 20 in which we are commanded to give thanks always for all things. This comes in the context of a command to be filled with the Spirit. Of course, being filled with the Spirit, we're freshly equipped to worship individually and corporately. in speaking to one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in our hearts to the Lord. So Thanksgiving is indeed constantly a vital component of individual and corporate worship. And so I want to share with you on the topic of how to be thankful in an unthankful age. By way of illustration, one year when Christmas Day came on a Sunday, a farmer decided to go to church, like many people do twice a year on Christmas and Easter, or we say Resurrection Day. And the sermon that day was taken from Isaiah 1.3, which says, the ox knows its owner and the donkey its master's crib. But Israel does not know. My people do not consider. In this text, God says that a person can be more dumb or forgetful than an animal. Well, after church, the farmer returned home and stood among his cows, and one of the cows came up to him alongside of him and began to lick his hand, which was a very practical demonstration of the sermon he just heard. As strong and as proud as the farmer was, he began to weep. He broke down, was deeply touched. He thought, God has done so much for me and yet I've never thanked him. My cow was far more grateful than I am. And what do I ever give her other than grass and water? Well, the application is unmistakable. I think sometimes we forget more than animals do who is the one that provides for us. And we see in our culture, our society today, the spirit of forgetfulness in spite of being saturated and immersed in materialism and an external prosperity. It seems like so few are thanking God and remember the source of all of our blessings, both physical and spiritual. And it is indeed in the first place, a sad diagnosis. We're living in an age of increasing apostasy. in which a lack of gratitude and a lack of thankfulness, a lack of love permeates the land. Seems that there's never been a time in the world's history when mankind has had more reasons to thank God than today. The level of abundance that we have is incredible. Even in third world countries, which I am privileged to visit from time to time and preach at conferences, The average poor, impoverished citizen of a third world country today is much better off than so many of cultures of old. We read in Matthew 24, and because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. And again, in 2 Timothy 3, 1 and 2, but know this, that in the last days perilous times will come for men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, disobedient to parents, unthankful. This prophetic text is fulfilled before our very eyes. There is a spirit of ingratitude that has swept across our world. But Thanksgiving ought to be a season, a great time for curing people of this amnesia. This disease is a comparatively rare affliction whose main feature is forgetfulness. There are cases of amnesia where people have forgotten their own names, their birth date, even their family members. Can you imagine looking at your mother and have no clue who she is? It's a terrible disease. It's a disease in which the memory becomes a complete blank and the past is wiped out altogether, such as amnesia. Fortunately, it's a rare physical disease, but spiritually speaking, it's not rare. Even in the church, we're swept up with such busy lives and the busyness of our schedule, our schedules increase the momentum. And sometimes it's just difficult to keep up with our devotional life, let alone just pause every day and count our blessings, naming them one by one, let alone bringing them before God in prayer with a heart full of thanksgiving and ravished with gratitude. as we recount them in prayer as the grounds of fervent worship. The psalmist calls us to forget not all his benefits in Psalm 103. Don't forget. Ingratitude is nothing short of spiritual amnesia. It stands for a voluntary or involuntary blotting out of past memory. And the mind is no longer sensitive when this happens to the blessings and benefits we received. On the part of some, it's as if things never happened. And so ingratitude becomes a spiritual weakness that we need to be on guard to. God's people are very apt to suffer from this disease. We can easily forget past mercies in the light of present needs and present emergencies. And those needs and emergencies will always be there, but we must force ourselves. We must make it our business to pause every day. And in our prayer time, there's a special component devoted to thanking God. One by one, we ought to be asking for the guidance and wisdom of the Holy Spirit to bring things to mind daily in which we are to thank God for. Amen. So in this message, I hope, among other things, to show you ways to preserve a thankful spirit and an attitude of gratitude in a generally unthankful world. And we need that as the church. We're to be shining forth all of the virtues and evidences and fruits of the spirit. We're to be light and salt. And when we even begin to thank God for the little things before an ungrateful, unconverted world, they'll stand up and take notice. You thank God for the food that you're eating. You're thanking God for this cup of water you're drinking. You're thanking God for this, that and the other thing that they so quickly take for granted. That's going to get somebody's attention and maybe an open door for a deeper witness down the road. Secondly, not only do we have a very sad diagnosis, but we have amnesia forgotten. This spiritual amnesia. Needs to. Disappear, we need to forget about it and come back into the land of memory, the land of remembrance, the land of remembering what God has done for us. So we need to forget about amnesia and come back to a place where the Holy Spirit prompted by the Word of God causes us to remember all of the comforts and benefits and graces that God has bestowed upon us in the Lord Jesus Christ. So this amnesia needs to be replaced by a spirit of thankfulness for who God is and what he's done for us. Amen. That's what a communion service is all about. It's the only ordinance that's perpetual in the New Covenant. Just one. And it's to be observed continuously because God wants us to always remember certain things in that ordinance that we absolutely cannot forget. It's a sin if you do not observe the Lord's Supper when God commands us to observe it specifically to remember things about our Lord Jesus Christ and his atoning death that we so often forget in the midst of a busy life. The opposite of thankfulness is what? Ingratitude or unthankfulness. God forbid that we should fall in behind a forgetful world that does not recognize the source of every blessing and that we would allow days and weeks and even months go by where we're only paying lip service to thanking God, but do not render a deep heart felt. Spirit of gratitude and worship to the Lord, such worship that would bring tears to our eyes, such worship that would touch the deepest pangs of love to God at the memory of him sending his son to die on the cross to save us from our sins. The Holy Spirit is our teacher. He's the one that brings to our remembrance the things that the Lord has done for us and the doctrines and truths of God's word that we often forget because of our inconsistent devotional life from time to time. We read in Romans 121 about the unconverted that although they knew God did not know God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were thankful. but became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened. Can you imagine taking such rich blessings, good health, paycheck after paycheck, even if you're unemployed, unemployment check after unemployment check, food, And the various, many diverse varieties of just about everything we have. Not one shirt, but ten shirts. Not one suit, but three suits. Not one pair of shoes, but ten pairs of shoes. Not one kind of fruit, but five kinds of fruit. Not one kind of potatoes, but five kinds of potatoes. And on and on and on we go. From fruit to clothing to cars. Not one car, but two cars. And if you don't have a car, well, you're borrowing a bus or a train or a plane. that you're paying for. You have transportation available to you to get where you need to go to keep up your lifestyle. Behind every single one of those blessings and every other one is a gracious, merciful, compassionate God that sees an ungrateful, forgetful spirit, but keeps on providing on His end, whether we thank Him or not. Well, why is that so? Well, because He's God. He cannot deny Himself. His mercy and compassion is everlasting. No one has plumbed the depths of it. It knows no height, nor depth, nor length, nor breadth. He's so kind, so good. Human language fails to describe and define the everlasting goodness and love of God to us. The Israelites are a good example of ingratitude. We read in First Corinthians 10 and verse six. Now, these things became our examples. To the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted and do not become idolaters, as were some of them, as it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play for Satan. Nor let us commit sexual immorality, as some of them did, and in one day twenty three thousand fell. Nor let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted and were destroyed by serpents. Nor complain, as some of them also complained and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now, all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come. The Israelites forgot God. They got caught up with their playtime in the desert. They took their eyes off of Christ, Jehovah Elohim, and they began to be comfortable of all places in a desert where I would think would be one of the least likely places to be comfortable. But when you have a worldly spirit driving you, you can adapt to any kind of worldly environment. And they lost the spirit of thankfulness and humility, and they began to complain. They longed for the leeks and the onions and the garlics that they enjoyed back in Egypt. And because of their unthankfulness, in part, besides other things, God got stirred up with anger and began to chastise them sorely. And many of them were killed. How many times because of our ingratitude or our complaining, because not only is ingratitude, but also a complaining spirit is the opposite of thankfulness and gratitude. That because of our complaining, constant complaining, I need this, I need that, I hurt here, I hurt there, so on and so forth. God is stirred up and maybe we are chastised as a result. The solution to preserve a spirit of remembrance of God's blessings is every day push aside the world, get into the Word of God and meditate deeply. Let the Word of Christ dwell in us richly until the remembrance of God's blessings begins to well our hearts up with a fresh spirit of thanksgiving. And all of the things that we lack and are without begin to evaporate and give way to all of the things that we have and that God has given to us and done for us. And also the remembrance that even one of those good things we are undeserving of, for we are to say with the spirit of humility and gratitude that when we've done everything to the Lord, we are at best unprofitable servants. One thing is for sure, God wants us, yes, commands us to remember our blessings. Take off the amnesia, forget about the forgetfulness. And let's remember every day as much as we can concerning the goodness of God in providing for us and being who he is for us. In the Bible, you'll find the offering of Thanksgiving nearly everywhere from cover to cover. Individuals offered up sacrifices out of gratitude in the book of Genesis. The Israelites sang a song of thanksgiving as they were delivered from Pharaoh's army as they crossed the Red Sea. The law of Moses set aside three times a year during the annual feasts. The unleavened bread, which was the feast of Passover, the harvest or Pentecost, and the feast of ingathering or the feast of tabernacles. Three times a year they were to journey to Jerusalem, at least the men were, and they were to deliberately, intentionally pause and thank God for all of the blessings that those harvests and feasts symbolized. When we talk about the need to remember, let me share with you in the first place, the remembrance of past blessings produces a spirit of worship and praise. You want to know how to sustain a spirit of thankfulness in an age of unthankfulness? Well, when you remember past blessings, just thanking God mechanically is not good enough. When the spirit is involved in that whole process, driving the dynamic forward of thankfulness, he transitions that spirit of thanksgiving into worship. into the other elements of worship, such as praise and just silent awe sitting before God, enjoying the majesty and wonder of His glory. So a spirit of thankfulness will transition into other elements of worship as we move from one to the other of them. In Psalm 136, one through four, We are told, oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever. And then it seems like the psalmist goes down a side path into many other reasons why we're to be thankful to God. So his beginning petition and or rather his expression of Thanksgiving leads to higher levels of worship through Thanksgiving and praise in verse two. He again steps off that path and gets on another path. Oh, give thanks to the God of gods for his mercy endures forever. Oh, give thanks to the Lord of lords for his mercy endures forever. To him alone does great wonders for his mercy endures forever. Who remembered us in our lowly state for his mercy endures forever and rescued us from our enemies for his mercy endures forever. who gives food to all flesh for His mercy endures forever. Oh, verse 26 says, give thanks to the God of heaven for His mercy endured forever. At verse 4, I dropped down to verse 23, by the way, in case you couldn't follow me after verse 4. But the whole psalm picks up momentum with the spirit of worship. Some of us have a hard time getting started in our prayer life. and we wander in our thoughts, I would suggest that we begin just to start thanking the Lord for the blessings of the day. Pick out a few things that the Lord blessed you with on a particular day. He preserved you from harm. The guy who cut you off didn't cause an accident where you were hurting him. I mean, any number of things. The food you forgot to thank God for that day. And on and on and on, and that will lead to other things. And as you are with an eye of faith dependent on the Holy Spirit to do the job he has been ordained to do, to come down and help the infirmity of your flesh so you can worship and praise and thank God as you should, you'll find yourself climbing to greater heights of worship. And so as you begin just simply in a very stammering way, a very inarticulate way, Thank the Lord for lowly earthly benefits of the day. You end up climbing the heights of praise and worship as the Spirit of God comes and lifts you up to that place of worship where you want to be as your ultimate goal in your walk with God. And Psalm 103, the famous Psalm that many of you or some of you have told me, Pastor Joe, it's my favorite Psalm. Well, it's my favorite Psalm too. You don't have a corner on the Psalm 103 market. being the favorite. It begins, bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and forget not all his benefits. And then he goes on through the duration of the psalm to enumerate many of those benefits. In verse 3, one of the first ones, even probably the best one, who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases. These two encompasses encompass both physical and spiritual preservation. The one who keeps you healthy, the one who's forgiven your sins, and that forgiveness is irreversible and guaranteed to last a lifetime, even forever and forever. And so he goes on in verse four, who redeems your life from destruction, who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies, who satisfies your mouth with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. And we can relate to that is as Christians because of the eagle is a symbol of the greatest bird that can sweep down to the lowest depths and then one second sweep back up into the highest heights. That's a picture of God who symbolizes the eagle in his in his skill of taking us as a backslider sweeping down to the lowest depths that we wander from God to and bringing us back up to the highest heights. That's a reason to thank God as a Christian. Someone has written an apt poem about this, this matter of thanksgiving. Give humble thanks is the title for all the gifts that thou dost send For every kind and loyal friend, give thanks. For prompt supply of all my need, for all that is good in word or deed, for gift of health along life's way, for strength to work from day to day, I give thee humble thanks. For ready hands to help and cheer, for listening ears, thy voice to hear, for yielded tongue, thy love to talk, for willing feet, thy paths to walk, for open eyes thy word to read, for loving heart thy will to heed, I give thee humble thanks. For Christ who came from heaven above, for the cross and his redeeming love, for his mighty power to seek and save, for his glorious triumph o'er the grave, for the lovely mansions in the sky, for his blessed coming by and by, I give thee humble thanks. The second way that Thanksgiving helps worship is that it is indeed a, you need to recognize it as a vital part of worship. Jonah said in 2.9, but I with a song of Thanksgiving will sacrifice to you. The prophet identifies the vital place that Thanksgiving has in worship. In this case, as we sing Our gratitude to the Lord. Of course, the word Psalm means what song and so many of the Psalms have woven through it. Words of thanksgiving to God and worship Psalm 100 and verse four talks about the important place of thanksgiving in corporate worship. What we're doing right now, enter into his gates with what Thanksgiving and into his courts with praise. Be thankful to him and bless his name, even while you're sitting here as the Lord is causing you to scan the panorama of his blessings to you. Can you thank and praise him right now where you sit as the Holy Spirit works in your heart? May he cause you to unleash with heart and tongue thankfulness to him. We see in the Old Testament examples of thanksgiving and worship, including the dedication of the temple in Second Chronicles five, verse 11. Just listen. And it came to pass when the priests came out of the most holy place for all the priests who were present had sanctified themselves without keeping to their divisions. And the Levites, who were the singers, all those of Asaph and Haman and Jeduthun with their sons and their brethren, stood on the east end of the altar clothed in white linen, having cymbals, stringed instruments and harps and with them 120 priests sounding with trumpets. Indeed, it came to pass when the trumpeters and singers were as one to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the Lord. Can you imagine as this musical and voice vibrato and crescendo culminated and converged together in thanking the Lord, especially when they were offered by people whose hearts were one in the spirit, one in truth in recognizing the source and the giver of every blessing, the Lord himself, how that must have glorified God. And that's why sometimes I say we ought not to have any mumblers and stammerers here at Christ Bible Church when we're singing. It's, you know, we're called to sing words of thanksgiving and praise, not hum, but sing. All right. And that's why preparation for worship is important. You cannot just randomly show up at church, you know, coming in on a wing and a prayer and just expect to worship in the spirit. We've got to seek God for the grace and strength of his spirit to be able to worship him in with spiritual strength. Another example is worship during the rebuilding of the temple, which included Thanksgiving in Ezra when they came back from captivity. Ezra reminds the brethren in chapter three, verse 10, it says when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priesthood in their apparel with trumpets and the Levites and the sons of Asaph with symbols to praise the Lord, according to the ordinance of King David of Israel. And they sang responsibly praising and giving thanks to the Lord. I remember as a little boy growing up in the synagogue in Brooklyn, New York for six years, going through Hebrew school. And then my parents taking me to to the synagogue on the holy days and the responsive reading led by the rabbi. The cantor would sing various songs himself. And every cantor I heard as a little boy, no matter what temple I went to, they all had beautiful voices. Can you imagine 120 cantors who were priests? Singing in unison, praise to God. But anyway, the responsive reading of the congregation where the congregation would respond with thanksgiving to the Lord. And then the rabbi would read from the Psalms and then the congregation would respond. We thank you. May his mercy endure forever. I still remember that as a little boy. at that during the synagogue worship. And and so another example is in David's prayer. As they gathered all the supplies and all the materials for the building of the temple, David says in First Chronicles, twenty nine, ten, therefore, David, bless the Lord before all the assembly, and David said, blessed are you, Lord God of Israel, our father forever and ever. Yours, O Lord, is the greatness, the power and the glory, the victory and the majesty. For all that is in heaven and in earth is Yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord. And You are exalted as head over all. Both riches and honor come from You. And You reign over all. Your hand is power. In Your hand is power and might. In your hand, it is to make great and to give strength to all. Now, therefore, our God, we thank you and praise your glorious name. After recounting all of the blessings of God to his people and then tying back every single one of every blessing to God himself, He just unveils the depths of thankfulness in his heart to God and praises the Lord himself. Oh, that in the New Testament, even in 2014, that true faithful evangelical churches will begin more and more, even this church, to set aside our sleepiness and our slothfulness when it comes to corporate worship, even if half the church were like horses bridled, racehorses chomping at the bit, can't wait to come into the house of the Lord with God's people to worship Him. The second one note is played on the piano or on the guitar, the people of God and their voices rise with praise. so that even some would be converted by the singing and the doctrine and the lyrics that speak so much of God and His attributes and His nature and His holy being. That's our desire, and it can still be done, because the promises are yea and amen in Jesus Christ. They are still ours. Heaven and earth will pass away, but His Word will never pass away. Even throughout the book of Psalms, The Psalmist starts a course of thanksgiving in Psalm 106. He says, praise the Lord, O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endures forever. That's Psalm 106 and verse 1. You know what? The very next Psalm, the exact phrase is repeated in verse 1 again. Psalm 107, 1 and 2. O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endures forever. And then he adds in verse 2, let the redeemed of the Lord say so. In other words, don't hold back, brethren. I'm not asking all of you in unison to say so verbally, but in your hearts, to the Lord, not to me. Say amen. I'm of the redeemed. I'm a child of God. I agree with that. That is the truth. I could say amen in my heart. And then in Psalm 118, the very same verbatim phrase in verse 1, O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endures forever. And then thirdly, to be thankful in worship requires a thankful heart. Again, this requires preparation and conditioning. We're given the Holy Spirit who helps us prepare for worship, who sustains us in walking in the Spirit throughout the day. Why? Because this treasure is in earthen vessels. The flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. And we cannot do the things that we want to do. That is perfectly. We find ourselves always coming up on the short end of the stick when it comes to putting desire into perfect action. When it comes to serving the Lord and obeying the Lord. But God has given us of His Spirit who strengthens us when the weakness of the flesh would pull us down. And at the same time, not only is the sovereignty of God a vital dynamic where the power of God is dispensed afresh into our hearts every day to lift us up from the miry clay of weakness, but also humanly speaking, There's a dimension where we are commanded to do certain things that God will not do for us. We must open our Bibles. We must use our educational and intellectual training and skills to read the word. We must pray and say, Lord, open your word that I might behold wondrous things out of it. We must exercise faith. Someone else will not exercise faith by proxy for us. We must do those things. And just because we are those among many who believe in the sovereign grace of God and the sovereign grace doctrines, we cannot circumvent human responsibility. We have to pick up our Bibles and read them. We cannot rely upon the pastor's training, the pastor's teaching, and all of these great truths that are articulated so gloriously in the rich heritage of Christian literature and reference books that we have. We can't sit back and buy our sinful silence and our practical atheism in approaching Sanctification say, well, they've done all those things for us and we've got the confessions and the creeds. They're all there. I subscribe to them. I agree with them. And therefore, I've got my doctrine settled. It's down pat. I can just move on with my life. No, the only way God is going to channel grace into your heart, not only doctrine into your mind, but grace into your heart is by faith. Whatsoever is not a faith is sin. Without faith, it's impossible to please God. You must exercise faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, faith itself is a gift of God. Yes, it is, but it's a gift that must be exercised through our minds. And through our spirits, and we must trust God. Very often it's in the obedience, it's in the path of obedience that God meets us with the promised blessings and strength and power. And He clothes us with fresh, renewed grace to lift us up out of the miry clay and have pure, sincere, raw thankfulness dispensed into our hearts. So that we don't have to rest on yesterday's gratitude or last month's gratitude by way of just paying lip service. Oh, this is what he did for me yesterday. This is what he did for me last month. When the Spirit of God is poured out afresh into our hearts, we have a fresh sense of gratitude for what the Lord has done for us now and in the past. And there's no replacing that. Therefore, we read in Hebrews 13 15. By him, let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name, continually giving thanks to his name. The strength required to do that must come from the Holy Spirit. In 1 Thessalonians 5.18 it says, In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. It's God's will for you and me to thank Him in everything, even for the bad things. Did I touch a nerve? Yes. The mind of God, the spiritually minded individual is able to look past the externals and the circumstances of our situations to the root and the core of every action and activity in the universe. And someone who understands the doctrine of God's sovereignty understands that everything comes from God. There is no random event. And therefore, when bad things happen to God's people, whether we have a clear conscience or not at the moment, we know that God is the author of it. Job knew this. He said the Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. So a worshipful heart can be presented to the Lord even when bad things are taking place. True worship does not have to diminish. or weakened or be less frequent. The case of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego is a classic example of this. Their circumstances were as dire, about as dire as you can get. But what were they doing at the worst moment physically? They were worshipping in the midst of the fire. And there was a fourth person in there with them. And so what God is saying that at the worst possible moment, if you're able to thank him in the spirit, the Lord will draw near and be with you in the fire. And suddenly all the pain and the difficulties of the situation will evaporate. They will draw away and become distant. And the present fellowship of the Lord will arrest your attention and fixate and focus your worship on him. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, we forget this next phrase with Thanksgiving. Here you are anxious, we've got to remember, be anxious for nothing. But in everything by prayer, so I'm anxious at the moment and I take it to the Lord in prayer and then he says with Thanksgiving, so at that anxious moment, begin to look for things you can thank God for. It's hard to do when your eyes are clouded with pain, but he tells you. Don't be anxious if you are, take it to the Lord in prayer and begin to thank him. And the Lord will help you see the silver spiritual lining in all of that, where God intends many of our trials to mature more spiritually. to help us mature so that we can be content in every situation that we are in and even be better worshipers and be thankful. Well, a poem goes like this. Count your blessings instead of your crosses. Count your gains instead of your losses. Count your joys instead of your woes. Count your friends instead of your foes. Count your smiles instead of your tears. Count your courage instead of your fears. Count your full years instead of your lean. Count your kind deeds instead of your mean. Count your health instead of your wealth. And count on God instead of yourself. Once a Christian leper in India was heard to pray, I thank God that He laid leprosy on me because of the lepers I have been able to lead to Christ. He saw his leprosy as part of God's saving plan. That the souls of the lepers might be washed white in the tide of the Savior's blood. God had permitted him to become a leper. And he was able to thank God for that. Some of you have read Alexander White, the great Scottish preacher and an author. He always began his prayers with an expression of gratitude. But there was one very cold day, a miserable day. A believer came to him and and wondered what he would pray that day on that miserable day. So he prayed, we thank the Lord that it is not always like this. So faith looked forward to what God would do on a better day. Well, thirdly, and very quickly, physician remembered, we have to forget the unthankfulness that is amnesia forgotten in the second place. In the third place, physician remembered. So we have this medical theme going through this need to be thankful and to maintain thankfulness. Well, who's the physician? Which one are we talking about? Well, of course, a great physician, the Lord Jesus Christ. And on this Thanksgiving day, that is for the church, that is for all practical purposes, we're to be thankful for the Lord Jesus Christ. We remember him. He's. The greatest gift God has given to us. The greatest thing of all that we are commanded to remember that prompts a spirit of thankfulness is the gift of salvation and the atoning death of our Lord Jesus Christ for us. In Colossians 2 7 we read as you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord so walk in him rooted and built up in him and established in the faith as you have been taught abounding in it with thanksgiving. We're to abound with thanksgiving for the Lord Jesus Christ as we walk with him. We're to constantly remember, not just once a month or once a week when we observe the Lord's Supper, but every day we are to remember the Lord Jesus Christ in the great gift of his salvation and his sacrifice in our place, on our behalf, dying in our place, bearing the wrath of God. in His own body on the cross, suffering a death that is indescribable in its pain, in its shame, in its humiliation, in its suffering, in our place, so we do not suffer the same. Now, God's people can pay lip service in just about every duty we do. We can go through the motions, including Thanksgiving. But when one considers the enormity of the blessings we've received from our Lord's substitutionary death, this kind of superficial gratitude is a real travesty. If there's one thing we're to be thankful for, it's the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible says this will dominate the thoughts, the attention of every intelligent being in heaven forever, including saints, Cherubim, Seraphim, angels, the beasts, the elders, whoever. We will all follow the Lamb withersoever He goes. And in Revelation 5 we have this amazing scene in verse 8 through verse 14 where all in heaven stand before the Lamb. And I pick it up in verse 8. Now when He had taken the scroll That is, the Lord Jesus Christ, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the Lamb. The Lamb that is on the throne. The Lord Jesus. Each having a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song saying, You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals. For you were slain and you have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation and have made us kings and priests to our God and we shall reign on the earth." There is this very sharp, targeted focus on one thing. It is the fact that the Lamb who is sitting on the throne is also the Lamb that was slain for the salvation of these that are singing His praise. They recognize He and He alone is worthy to take the scroll from the hand of Him who is on the throne. They also recognize the fact that His substitutionary death, His atoning sacrifice on the cross, and His shed blood from it is what redeemed them. Not only was it an acceptable sacrifice to the Father, but it actually cleansed and washed away the sins of those who are redeemed. And this elicits such a response of thanksgiving From every tribe and tongue and people and nation, the four living creatures, the elders, everyone is worshiping the Lamb because of His sacrificial death on the cross and the remembrance that He has made them kings and priests to God on the basis and grounds of that atoning work. Then I looked, verse 11, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures, the elders, the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000, and thousands of thousands saying with a loud voice, worthy is the lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. And every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea and all that are in them, I heard saying, Blessing and honor and glory and power be to him who sits on the throne and to the lamb forever and ever. Then the four living creatures said, amen. And the 24 hour elders fell down and worshiped him who lives forever and ever. Can you imagine not only those in heaven, this vast innumerable company described, but also in other parts of God's universe on earth, under the earth, on top of the earth, next to the earth. All in unison as if there's some omnipresent song leader to lead them. They all sing in unison. Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom. The praise and the thanksgiving that comes forth from every intelligent creature. Why? were all pointed back to the cross where the blood was shed. The meaning and application and power of that act of Christ dying on the cross causes everyone in the universe to worship the Lamb of God with intensity, with fervency, with purity, and with sincerity. And that will drive their worship and their prayers and their praises and their thanksgiving for all eternity future. The cross. Obviously at the moment, coming home to their minds and their understanding and their imagination, are the greater depths of the meaning and the accomplishment of Christ's death on the cross that was veiled to them previously. But now this heavenly scene has opened up the truth of the atonement and the shed blood and the sacrificial death to them in a way that causes everyone in this chorus of praise to worship the Lamb and thank Him. Today, we are to be thankful for the Lord Jesus Christ. For His shed blood. And one day if you're a believer, you and I will be joining that company. Things will open up to us more fully than we've ever understood before about all the various strands of meaning and application of Christ's death on the cross. was a man named John Taller, Johann Taller, a German, who was a great man of God back in the 13th century in Strasbourg, Germany. He met a peasant one day walking on the street. God give you a good day, my friend, Taller said to him. The peasant asked briskly, I thank God I never have a bad day. Taller, astonished, kept silent for a moment, then added, God, give you a happy life, my friend. The peasant replied. I thank God I am never unhappy, never unhappy, cried, taller, bewildered. What do you mean? Well, when it's sunshine, I thank God when it rains. I thank God when I have plenty. I thank God when I am hungry. I thank God. And since God's will is my will and whatever pleases God pleases me, why should I say that I am unhappy when I am not? Paula looked at him with awe. Who are you? He said, I'm a king, said the peasant, a king. Where's your kingdom? The peasant smiled and whispered, whispered softly in my heart. The king and the kingdom is in his heart and this poor man. is thankful not only for everything, even bad things that come his way, but especially for the Lord Jesus Christ. We're to be thankful for him. Three quick things I want to share with you about our Lord Jesus that we should be grateful for. First, his unconditional love. You know, you and I are only worthy of judgment and wrath and punishment. Before we were converted, if people could kind of tune in and come into our brain and just have a chair and sit down and just listen to our thoughts all day long, the musings of our minds, the judgments that we make, the evil thoughts we have towards people and the wicked motives of all of our decisions and plans and the and the wicked, evil, atheistic and selfish thoughts that we have towards ourselves and against God. We would say, hey, there's no redeeming quality about myself whatsoever. We'd be our worst judge or our best judge. But in spite of all this, we read that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. We read in scripture that he has everlasting love for his people. He died on the cross to save his people from their sins. In eternity past, As well as before our conversion here on Earth. And even as Christians, when we do really bad things, secret sins and all the rest, his love continues. His love is so powerful, so great. It's even better than the love that we have for our own children. and the way we treat our own children is not as loving. Are you thankful today for the love of the Lord Jesus Christ for you at your worst? For God demonstrated his love toward us in that while we were what? Yet sinners Christ died for us. Thank him for his love today for you. Secondly, are you thankful for his atoning death? The Bible says He made Him, God made Christ who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. We have the passive and active obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ. He who was the embodiment and of everything that is holy and perfect and righteous and godly. He became sin for us. God took our sins and put them on Christ and and judged Christ as if Christ committed the sins that we committed. He didn't deserve any of it to be punished for any of those sins because he never said, but he willingly, lovingly, voluntarily took our punishment, took our place in judgment. to pay a debt that we could never pay with all of our works and good deeds, even if we were able to labor for a thousand lifetimes, we couldn't earn it. He took the wrath of God, the equivalent of an eternity in hell. He bore it in His own body, not only yours as a Christian, Billions and billions of believers from the beginning of the world, Adam, all the way to the end. He took all their punishment. I wonder why angels had to come and minister to him and hold his humanity together. Such wrath bound up in the space of hours rather than stretched out through an eternity in the lake of fire. The amount of power and energy to pour out such wrath through all eternity future upon unconverted souls in a lake of fire, but condensed into a matter of hours for all of God's people all at once. to be poured out on the head of Christ on the cross? Can you imagine the level of horror and sheer dread our Lord Jesus must have experienced as He bore God's wrath passively in His body without one complaint, saying, I'm innocent? And on the other side of it, He obeyed the Lord. We see the active obedience of Christ in fulfilling every law, in obeying every command in Scripture. He kept the law perfectly so that we could become the righteousness of God in him. He took his perfect record of obedience and transferred it to me so that God looks at me as being One who kept his law perfectly and he imputed his righteousness to me. He applied it to my account. Are you thankful for that? That you stand before God innocent, not guilty. Try to condense, try to see yourself in a lake of fire. and take all the screams and the shrieks and the most dreadful shouts of pain and horror being separated from God forever in a place of torment. Take that terrible experience and apply it to the Lord Jesus who went through that in your place. Oh, if you're not a believer today, I plead with you with all my heart Your only way of escape of such terrible judgment is to come to the Lord Jesus Christ, even though you can't see Him with your eyes nor hear Him audibly. To believe with all your heart that God raised Him from the dead 2,000 years ago after He died on the cross, ascended to heaven, He went up to heaven, He sat down at the right hand of God, and ever since He's been there, listening to the cries of the lost, God be merciful to me, a sinner. He's still listening. He's still hearing. He's still saving. Souls, oh, would you go to Him. Believe in your heart that He's there listening to you and will save you if you ask Him to. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. What love is this? And lastly, can you thank him for his mediatorial and intercessory ministry for you as a child of God? Think about it when you're not thinking about it, because most of the day our thoughts and minds are occupied with our earthly chores and duties and cares. But all that time, our Lord Jesus is villaging to pray for our every need, to intercede for us, to mediate for us. To be an attorney who speaks up before the Father and every request is granted. He conveys our needs with such articulate expression. He conveys our needs with the level of pathos and sympathy and empathy that we need someone to convey who represents us so that every time I need mercy, every time I need protection, every time I need grace to keep me going. As the object of His grace, He knows exactly what to say and the Father grants it. Wow! Is that a cause for thanksgiving to God for Christ, our mediator, our intercessor, whoever lives to make intercession for the saints? Heaven is going to be some worship service and all of these sublime ineffable, inexpressible elements of the beauty and glory of Christ and His roles and functions as prophet, priest, and king on our behalf will come out so fully for us to see. I don't know if we're going to breathe at that point, but I'm going to anticipate a lot of sucking sounds going on from saints realizing the depth of grace and power and love that have been demonstrated to us, His saints, by the Lord Jesus when we know it and when we don't know it, which is most of the time. Oh, thank Him today, will you? Let's do that as we close in prayer. Oh, our great, merciful, compassionate, loving Lord Jesus Christ, we thank You and we praise You For who you are, God Almighty, the second person of the Godhead, full of grace and truth, full of might and power. You were in the world and the world was made by you, but the world did not know you. But we thank you only by your grace that we know you and that you drew us to yourself with cords of love. When we were blind and alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in us, because of the blindness of our hearts, You brought us to Yourself and plucked us from the fire, as it were, like a brand burning, and planted our feet on a solid foundation, even the Lord Jesus Christ. For no other foundation can be laid than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. We praise You for the Lamb of God. We bless you for the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for his atoning death. We thank you that he loved me so much, even before I was born, that he died on the cross to save me from my sins. And he has never changed his mind on that, that he died on the cross once for all and will never reverse the process. We thank you, O Lord, for your persevering, enduring love in spite of my own unfaithfulness and weakness and inconsistency. We thank you. for Your perfect love and Your faithfulness to us and to shepherd our never-dying souls. Thank You for being so faithful to us. Thank You, Lord. Thank You. Receive our thanks and our praise. And for those who are unconverted still, I pray that the darts of conviction that have been sent like missiles into the hearts and minds of the hearers who are lost today would would bear the fruit of salvation. That today would be their Jubilee, that they would be released from spiritual captivity, that they would come out of the wilderness of sin into the land of the living. Oh Lord Jesus, have mercy on their souls and let today be the day when they will come fully into the light without shame or fear of rejection because of saving faith exercised on their part in the Lord Jesus Christ. For this is our prayer. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.