On Thanksgiving Part 1
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Text: Psalm 92
Theme: On Thanksgiving Part 1 – Thanksgiving, Temporary Blessing of Wickedness, Eternal of Righteousness
Verse 1a
The psalm doesn’t just say that it is right to give thanks to the Lord, but that it is good. Sometimes in the Old Testament this word is translated “pleasant.” It doesn’t just mean that it is correct to please the Lord. It means that it is an enjoyable, healthy, beneficial, pleasant thing!
It is not just correct, it is a delight!
If you’ve ever spent some time giving thanks to the Lord, I think you have proven this true by your experience. If you haven’t done this, you really ought to!
Gratefulness to God is biblical. And it is enjoyable and healthy because it is something we are meant to do. Thankfulness includes positive and grateful thoughts and words, and it leads to a positive and grateful heart. Thankfulness enjoys and is glad for the things you already have, rather than uncomfortable longing after things you may or may not ever have.
Thankfulness is also aligning ourselves positively in our relationship with God. The Holy Spirit affirms us in our hearts of God’s love when we do this. We draw closer to God which helps to fill a void in our souls. Thankfulness is not just correct, it is so, so, so good!
What a shame that Thanksgiving is such a diminished holiday these days. It is easy to let happen. Christmas and Easter are indeed more important holidays to believers. There’s no debating that in my book. The life, death, and resurrection of Christ means our salvation and reunification with God.
And so, we extol Christmas and Easter and we fight for Christmas and Easter. It’s hard to fight all the battles we fight. But quietly while this has gone on, Thanksgiving has died. And ironically, greed has killed it. Thanksgiving is bad for business; gift giving is good for business; so you don’t see a lot of promotion of Thanksgiving anymore!
What a shame! Oh, how our country and our hearts need to be thankful to God. Do we need more stuff, we absolutely don’t. We need thankfulness to God – it fills a void and brings a joy that stuff never ever can.
A strange thing about thanksgiving though is that, despite how good and pleasant it is, it can be difficult to do. When you sit down and purpose to be thankful and start to confess to God all of His marvelous blessing, what a relief it is! But to actually sit down and do that, often we don’t.
Covetousness can get in the way, anxiety, fear, and just general busyness. We end up not doing it and miss out on something very good by not doing it.
Link: In the following verses and phrases, the psalmist talks about some ways to give thanks and some things to be thankful for.
Verses 1b-4
Singing praises to God is an enjoyable expression of thankfulness. Even if you aren’t a good singer, it is enjoyable! You know, on your way to work and back – morning and evening. Or for some people that is evening and morning instead! No one can hear you but God. So maybe you’re not going to give a special in church through singing, but when you’re in your car it’s just you and God. Why not sing some thanksgiving to God? Your day will be better for it and what’s more important, your relationship with God will be better for it.
Here are three things we can be praising God for – His steadfast love, His faithfulness, and the work of His hands.
Three simple phrases: steadfast love, faithfulness, the work of His hands. But they are big categories!
The multitude of sins we have had forgiven of us is an expression of His steadfast love. And we have had a whole lot of sins forgiven! The many gifts we have been given – His steadfast love. The joy and peace He brings – His steadfast love.
That He has never failed us – His faithfulness. That He never leaves us alone – His faithfulness. He is true to His promises – His faithfulness. He answers prayer – His faithfulness.
The work of His hands is pretty easy – just look around you! But we also live in a pretty blessed time with the technology available to us. I was talking with a friend a few weeks ago about how she likes to watch travel shows. If I had a TV, that’s what I’d like to watch too! Growing up, me and my family would sit down together and watch Globe Trotters. It wasn’t a travel show, but I liked to watch Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter.
There’s a lot of stuff out there – books, shows, movies, etc., that can help you to see all kinds of amazing things that are the work of God’s hands! You can see stuff at the bottom of the ocean – that’s terrifying; actually, I avoid that stuff. You can see microscopic stuff. Stuff outside of our solar system. All of it is amazing, even the creepy stuff at the bottom of the sea. *The two books*
Verses 5-15
There is a slight subject change here, but it is still related to giving thanks. The unifying thought of verses 5-15 is that wickedness is temporary and doomed to destruction, but righteousness is eternal and will dwell with God forever.
When the psalmist says that the wicked are like grass and that the righteous are like trees, he is illustrating stability and blessing in the long-haul. Grass is able to grow tall quickly. It can become bright green rapidly. But grass can only grow so high. Grass does not last very long. And grass doesn’t produce valuable things like a tree does.
In contrast to that, trees grow very slowly. If you plant grass and trees side by side, then you are going to notice the grass will at first look a lot healthier and more prosperous. It can take many years for a tree to grow very tall.
But, the growth of trees continues long past the span of our mortal lives. Trees are able to grow much taller than grass – enormously tall if you’ve ever seen the Redwoods in California. Trees produce fruit, of much greater value than what grass produces.
This grass vs. tree contrast is a lot like the old turtle vs. hair race story. The hair starts off rocketing ahead in the race – boom he’s gone and the turtle looks like he’s a failure about to be crushed. The hair smokes the turtle – at first. But the turtle always wins the race in the end.
Even so, wicked people are able to reach a state of prosperity much more rapidly than righteous people – I mean, if they are a thief, they can just steal it. Fastest way to a million dollars is to steal it. Want to become a millionaire quickly? Rob a bank. That’s also the fastest way to jail though and even if you might get away with it in this life, God certainly knows about what’s happened.
A good way to get a nice job is to lie and misrepresent yourself about it. But that’s not going to pay off long term, for sure.
Sin can be exciting and fun in the short term, but you sow what you reap and it’s going to come back to bite you eventually.
On the contrast – doing the right thing doesn’t always mean immediate benefit in the short term. The prosperity of the righteous starts off slow but grows and continues into eternity and culminates in something far larger and greater than the wicked ever achieve in their quick-burn lives.
So what does this have to do with thanksgiving?
Well, one of the biggest obstacles to thanksgiving is comparing yourself to other people. If you look at your life vs. a wicked person’s life, it might be tempting to grumble a bit – Lord, how come these people who don’t love you prosper, but I don’t?
True story. I have thought this, my family has thought this, friends have thought this – How come Jenni and Aaron are unable to have children of their own, but people who hate God are fertile and having multiple abortions? And how come adoption is gonna cost us $30k, but wicked people are pushing for taxpayer funded abortions and they are already very affordable. Ever thought anything like that?
Or maybe you love God but are struggling financially while people who don’t are doing well? A righteous person dies young, maybe even in childhood, and a wicked person lives into their 90s?
That thought is an obstacle to thanksgiving, isn’t it? It can be a little more difficult to say “thank you” to God, when you see people who are not doing what they are supposed to be doing prospering; while you who are doing what you are supposed to be doing do not prosper, and in fact you might even be negatively impacted by doing the right thing. Such comparisons might even lead you to say in your heart “God is not upright to allow the wicked to have this nice thing while the righteous don’t get it.”
This is what these verses are answering – the righteous are like trees and the wicked are like grass. You are thinking short term if you envy the grass. You are thinking short-term if you think there is unrighteousness in God because the wicked prosper. Because in the long term it is much better to be a tree than to be grass. The tree ought not to envy the grass; it is stupid and foolish of us to envy the grass. The grass will be destroyed. It will perish forever. The tree will remain and produce fruit forever.
When thoughts about the prosperity of the wicked interfere with your thanksgiving, consider the grass and the trees. The difference between them illustrates the differences between the prosperity of the wicked and the righteous. You are going to get to live with God forever. You are going to get to dwell in His house. And He will cut the grass down in His time.
God works on an eternal time-scale and He is pleased to bring beauty and prosperity over time. The wicked only get a short time-scale and will do what they can to prosper as much and as fast as they can, but they won’t last.
Application:
Three simple phrases: steadfast love, faithfulness, the work of His hands. Give thanks and sing! Don’t let