you All right, ladies and gentlemen, trust you enjoyed your food. We'll encourage you to continue to eat. And if you want to avail yourself to the desserts, don't let the music stop you. Just ask that you would do it quietly. But at this time, we're going to transition our time to some musical performances. And to start us off, because there will be a theme in a lot of these songs that you'll hear, A lot of the children that are playing the piano are playing hymns that incorporate the theme of Thanksgiving. And so I wanted to start by reading Psalm 95 for us. Psalm 95 says, oh, come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving. Let us shout joyfully to him with psalms, for the Lord is the great God. and the great king above all gods, and his hands are the deep places of the earth. The heights of the hills are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. And then it ends with, O come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker. So at this time, we're going to have our first performer, Mr. Clayton Messer. Clayton tells me he's been playing the piano for two and a half years, and he is going to be playing the hymn, We Gather Together. They're going to be headhunted here by Clayton. Good job. Our next is Carter Decker. He is going to be playing three numbers from one of his books that he's been working on. Carter just started playing the guitar for about a year now, maybe a little bit more. And so if you want to go and get set up. His first will be what's called in his book Prelude 14, then he'll play a version of The Waltz, and then he'll play Prelude 21. So before you do that. Make sure you're in tune. do do do you you you It was that very moment, that last song, I realized the student has become the teacher. I didn't teach him that last song, so. I didn't even know that you were playing that one. I was like, excellent. All right, next we have David Decker, who is going to be playing one hymn. I think he's settled on one hymn. Although I was trying to get him to play two. He will be playing, Oh, How I Love Jesus. you This time Owen is going to come up. I live by the axiom, those who can't teach. And so Owen is my student. We don't have the L. Where's the music? So Owen has been playing for a few months now, not real long. And so to encourage him to play, we found an arrangement he and I can play together. I'll play an E major. Can you see? One, two, ready, play. So when I sent out the email, I wasn't sure who was going to respond with wanting to share a talent, and I got the joyful reply from Anna and Michaela, and they're going to treat us to a few songs. One on the clarinet, I think is going to be Penny Lane. Some of you will recognize the Beatles song. And then they will perform on the piano a song that Michaela, I think, wrote herself called Tandem Bike Riding. And Michaela explains that this song is how she imagines on the piano how it would sound when, I guess, bike riding. You'll have to explain it better than I did. Aaron's saving me here. Oh, wow. I was. do do do do you Bye for now. do do do do do And for our final performance this evening, we're going to conclude with Carly Messer. She's been playing the piano for four years, and she will be playing Blessed Assurance, along with an arrangement of Yesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. I think our performers deserve another round of applause. Give them a hand. Proud of all of you, did a wonderful job. Thank you so much for your participation. Well, when it came to asking ourselves, Alphys and I, who is going to, excuse me, Alphys and me. who is going to, who are we going to pick to give a homily slash sermonette slash whatever you want to call it. For the Harvest Blessings dinner, we thought, well, with Matt planning to leave us and take a calling in Georgia, we thought it was fitting that Matt would give us a word of encouragement, something with the theme of Thanksgiving. I didn't really give you much parameters outside of that, so. Did we give you a time limit? Oh, wow, okay. You keep to that. I'm just kidding. This will probably be one of the last times we'll hear you. If you go a little bit longer, we'll allow it. So I'm very thankful for Matt, and he's been a tremendous encouragement to me, and I know he has been to you. So Matt, if you would come up here. I was very thankful when I was asked to speak tonight on the theme of Thanksgiving because I knew I would be at no shortage of material. Even thinking of tonight with the meal and all the work that's gone in, even on Wednesday, getting this room ready and then hearing our entertainment. There's so much to give thanks to God for. And then even more so when we think of our Lord Jesus Christ and all God has done to save us. Thanksgiving will be the grand theme and activity of eternity for the saints. But I do have seven to 10 minutes, so I don't intend to go on for an eternity tonight. So I've selected Psalm 100, a Psalm of Thanksgiving, for a reading. And I want to keep it simple and ask the question, what does it mean to give thanks to God? So here is Psalm 100. a psalm of thanksgiving. Make a joyful shout to the Lord, all you lands. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before his presence with singing. Know that the Lord, he is God. It is he who has made us and not we ourselves. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise. Be thankful to him, and bless his name. For the Lord is good, his mercy is everlasting, and his truth endures to all generations. Amen. And so in this wonderful psalm, we are not only invited to come before the Lord, but we are told to come before him bringing thanks. It says to enter into his gates with thanksgiving. But here's a question to you. How would you define thanksgiving? How would you define giving God thanks? Many of you probably think, well, that's a pretty simple thing. We give thanks all the time. You know, you just do it. You say thank you. And it's a very natural thing for us, so we don't have to think about what it is to give thanks. But when I was trying to come up with a definition, I could do no better than certain Puritans I found, but I took them and I reduced them down to something simple, because again, seven to 10 minutes. So here's a definition for you for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is praising God for his goodness to us with the intent of declaring our love to him. And so it's both praising God for what he has done for us, but from a heart of love. And that love is so very important. When you think of that, this idea of praise for his goodness to us and love, we certainly have no shortage of topics to praise him for. Just think tonight. Think of all this food we've enjoyed. Think of our fellowship. But then stop and think about your life and what led you up to this point. Every single day, my guess is, we have had food and water and clothing and shelter. And I know that because if you didn't, you wouldn't have made it here tonight. But these are all things to be thankful for. Yet often we don't think even about the ordinary everyday things we receive from the Lord. Yet how bountiful are his mercies toward us. Just think back down the corridor or the past of history. Think of all of our ancestors. Think of all the people through history that God protected and oversaw so that our parents would come together and then we would even be here now. If I was to go around the room and ask you, was there ever a time you were in danger or your life was threatened? I'm sure every single one of you could give an account of a time that the Lord protected you. And if we all were to add him up into a book or all get up here and share, we'd be here all night for sure. The Lord is abundantly good to us. Even thinking back to our first parent, Adam, in the garden, there would have been a moment where Adam went from not existing to existing. There would have been a moment where he opened his eyes to this bountiful land, a paradise of good things that God had created even before creating him, and he was also in a blessed relationship with the Lord. And I don't know what his first words were because the Bible does not tell us, but if he gave thanks as the very first things from his lips, a hallelujah and a thank you to God, that would have been very fitting. However, as we all know, something's not quite right with us, because often, even as Christians, we are not quick to give thanks as we ought. Our minds can instead turn to things to be dissatisfied with. And while we were created to bear fruit of thanksgiving to God, oftentimes instead, due to our remaining sin, instead we're bearing these bitter weeds of complaint and grumbling. And it's all because of sin. If Adam had not sinned, we would have all, like him, continued on in thanksgiving, just naturally giving that praise. But instead, now we suffer from a grumbling spirit. And indeed, the Bible in Romans 1 points out that something that defines the sinner apart from God is unthankfulness. Not praising God for his goodness to us, And that's a sad thing, but I can prove it to you. When's the last time you were in the grocery store and there was a really long line and you were wondering when you were going to get out? Well, the sad truth is if you want to make some friends, start grumbling. It's true. I've seen it because I grew up in theme parks where there are long lines. The minute one person says, this is taking too long, you hear an echo. It sure is. What's the problem? And then another voice. It's stuffy in here too. That's just the air we breathe now is one of complaint. But if there was someone in line that said, you know, I'm thankful. It's never taken this long before. And I'm just grateful to be here and to be alive. Everyone would look at this person and think, this is a weirdo. But we should be thankful and we should not be grumbling. With the wonderful, blessed news is that the Lord did not leave us in our state of grumbling, did he? In our state of unthankfulness, in our situation of sin and misery and being apart from him. He sent his beloved son into this world, born of a virgin, to come and to die for our unthankfulness and our sin. That way he can bring us back to God and newness of life. And now as Christians, we can have that heart of love restored in Christ, where now we can enter his courts with thanksgiving, acknowledging his goodness to us, praising him for it, but from a true heart of love, where we want to testify to the world about all that our God has done for us in Jesus. He has taken us from being lost and hell bound He's brought us into the kingdom of His beloved Son, where now Thanksgiving is our theme. And in our houses, the songs of the saints go forth with praise. And even tonight, as we heard these beautiful renditions, many of which were hymns. And also, if you have not trusted the Lord, if you have not turned to Him to be saved, The blessed news is that His arms are open to sinners still, to come to Him, to confess your sins, even of ungratefulness to Him, and then to enter His courts with praise through faith in Jesus Christ, and to know of a certainty that we have a blessed hope ahead of us, one not of an eternity of grumbling, but one of an eternity of praise in heaven with our Lord. I don't know if that was seven to 10 minutes, but that's where I'm going to close. Let's pray. Oh Lord God, we thank you. You have blessed us so abundantly in this land. You have given us our food, you have given us our drink, and everything we need. Please forgive us how we often fail to recognize all your goodness and kindness to us. We pray you'd forgive us in Jesus, and that you would fill us with a heart of love for you that would overflow in thanksgiving, even as we turn now to sing as a church and to continue to enjoy fellowship tonight. In the name of our Lord Jesus, we give thanks. Amen. Thank you for that, Matt. Very encouraging word. We have much, much to give thankfulness to God for. And one of the things that we can thank God for is his faithfulness to us. He is unfailing to us. And so if you have a bulletin, I'd like to invite you to take the bulletin and turn it over. And there is a music printed on the back of it. Great is thy faithfulness. We'll sing all three verses and we will conclude with an amen, and then I'll have a few announcements before we do that. So I know you've had a lot of food, but we sing better when we stand. So I'm going to ask you to please stand as we sing, Great is Thy Faithfulness. Yeah! you I see on to thee. Pardon for sin and love, be sad and do red. Sign of dear presence to thee. Strength for today and pride, hope for tomorrow. Blessings of mind with 10,000 beside. No wonder He divided and provided. Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me. Well, before we conclude, we want to say thanks, give our thankfulness to some of you here. We are a church that is truly blessed by many of the servants, and we don't do this enough, and we don't have enough to go around, you could say, but we do want to... especially thank some of the members of the church who serve us tirelessly. A lot of times they do things behind the scenes or they hide behind the piano or some sort and they fill in when we call upon them at last moment. And I want to say thank you to Melanie Holloway and for your willingness to play the piano. Wednesday nights, you know, I'll come in and say, hey, can we play this number? And yeah, let's do it. And without much prompt. And so Melanie, we have a gift card we'd like to give you, a thank you card. Or there's more. We are a church blessed with pianists. And apparently, we've got some coming up that are ready to fill in the ranks, it sounds like. I'm really excited about that. Carly and Clayton, that was a tremendous blessing. I'm also thankful to Anna. Where are you, Anna? You joined us, and you fell right into place, I feel like. You volunteered your piano abilities, and you are pretty much our other regular pianist. And, you know, we call upon you, and we've thrown a few curveballs to either Melanie or Anna, and they hit them out of the park. And so, we also would like to give you a little something special. Anna, if you would come up here. And the last one, this is a bit more personal for me, because almost every Wednesday, Wednesday is bulletin day for me and Alpheus. We go through, and Melanie and Anna know, because we send out emails of what's going on in the bulletin. We plan out the services. We have a spreadsheet. We can go back to at least, I don't know how far back the spreadsheet goes, but it goes back a ways. And we document everything. And then we send it to Megan. And Megan Holloway runs it all. She puts it in the format. She emails it out. She prints it. She does a lot of work, and she does it all the time, like all the time. Even when she is on vacation or going on vacation, she makes sure it's done before she leaves. Both she and Ryan are very diligent and I'm very thankful. It's one of those things where you don't realize how much you use these until you don't have them. And so I'm very thankful that Megan has worked so relentlessly on this, even with the boys at the home now. And so Megan, we want to say thank you. If you would come up here, we have something for you as well. Well, indeed, we are a very, very blessed church. We're blessed to have you all come out here this evening to fellowship with one another. And so as we come to our conclusion, I'll close us with prayer. And then I'll invite you to fellowship with one another. There's probably more food to eat. And I don't think anyone will look at you sideways or anything, because I was kind of looking. I didn't get dessert yet, so I might do that myself. So we'll see. But feel free to hang around and fellowship. And let me tell you what, pastor, would you come up here and close us with prayer? Thank my fellow elder for being the emcee tonight and taking care of all the burdens of leading the evening. It's just a joy and always a joy and delight to be with you, dear brethren, and to have friends and family among us here. It truly is good for us to give thanks to God And so let's close in prayer and do that now. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the grace that has been bestowed upon us all who know the Lord Jesus, your beloved son. We thank you for how you have called us and you have given us your spirit and Lord, you've given us joy in our hearts and love. You've given us a desire to serve and to please you. You've given us a love for one another for this is the way we know that we've passed from life to death because we love the brethren. Thank you, Father, for our church and the joy that we have that we have among ourselves here in this congregation. And we would pray your blessings upon the coming year as we continue to serve you and to serve one another that you'd be pleased to add to us and add to the joy that we have, Lord. We thank you, God, for the food, for the fellowship, for the music, for the talent you've given your children. We bless you, our God, and we thank you for all your goodness toward us. Please watch over all these, your people, as they travel home this evening and as they meet on the Lord's Day, your blessed Sabbath day. Dear God, we pray that you would meet here at Trinity and you meet with me and Paul River and that, God, we would rejoice in this great salvation. Lord, who are we that we should be given such grace as this? But you have. We want to give you praise and thanks for it all. In Jesus' name, amen.