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The holidays are here again and again I think that this year has flown by and the season has snuck upon us. Thanksgiving will be different in my house this year because for the first time, my parents will have come to my house rather than me returning to theirs and all for the reason that this year there is one more mouth at the table than before. We'll probably be leaving the meal to change a diaper or two and the conversations topics will be quite different. And yet as much as everything has changed with the arrival of our first child, the traditions of the holidays will for the most part remain the same: turkey, dressings, pumpkin pie, homemade rolls, gravy, eat too much, and all of that. It's hard to change some things that are so engrained into our lives. And I can testify that both my parents and in-laws know how to celebrate a Thanksgiving feast. I grew up eating a spread of food that would send ordinary people into a food-induced coma! My parents will be here for Thanksgiving and I can tell you that we will have homemade yeast rolls and pumpkin pie and cakes and cookies and thick "slap yo' mama" gravy! Did I mention the homemade rolls?

The glutton fest that we call the Thanksgiving holiday started in America with the Pilgrims and the Puritans taking time to feast in the fall after the abundance of the harvest and to give God thanks for the blessings of the previous year. Back then, just simply being alive another year was often reason enough to celebrate, and so they would come together with neighboring colonies and settlements to give thanks to God for their lives and health and abundance. Most people today fail to realize that the Pilgrims were just continuing a celebration that has it's roots in the customs of Israel because it was in the late fall and beginning of winter of the year, that the Jews came together and celebrated the "Feast of Dedications" and gave thanks for all that God had done throughout the year.

I do not think that there is anything wrong with celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, any day of the year nevertheless in December and, in fact, Christmas is one my very favorite times of the year to preach because there has never been a child born -- even taking in the latest Sibley baby, as beautiful as she is -- there has never been a child born more important and wonderful than Jesus Christ. But I have to admit as a student of God's Word that we have much, much, more Biblical precedence for celebrating Thanksgiving than Christmas. People back then didn't focus on birthdays as much as we do today and so to take a specific day to celebrate Christ's birth was a later invention -- although I think a good one. But people did regularly take time to reflect on the past year and give thanks for everything that they had received, even before the time of Christ. We are never commanded to celebrate Jesus' birth in the Bible, but we are many times throughout the scriptures commanded to take days and even weeks to thank God for His blessings and power. I believe that the holiday of Thanksgiving began as and still should be a spiritual endeavor with God Almighty as our focus.

And so I've come to preach to you that Martha Stewart can teach you to how to prepare some food for your holiday traditions -- she's out of jail now-- but if you want to really know how to have a true Thanksgiving feast this week then you must turn to God's Word which commanded it. I want to challenge you this year not just to have a dinner, but to also have a true Thanksgiving as the scriptures command for us to have. No food is necessary in the celebration even though we have that coming up a few moments. In fact, all the ingredients for having a true Thanksgiving feast are present right now in this place without us having to go anywhere else to get it.

Somebody said "well duh, preacher." But we have largely lost the true meaning of the word, "thanksgiving" today. The commercialization of Christmas has been a topic often preached on by ministers and it's no secret that our society has done much to focus on other things than the real "reason for the season," the coming of Jesus Christ. Lost in all of that is that we tend to forget that our godless society has pretty much done the same thing to the festival of this week of November. Children learn in school that the Puritans and Pilgrims were giving thanks, but they are not told who it was that they came together to thank. They teach our kids today that the holiday started with the Pilgrims coming to this country to have "religious freedom" but they neglect to tell them that they came to have the freedom to worship completely and honestly the God of the Bible. It always seems that the history books neglect to hammer the point that this country was founded not just to have the freedom to worship any god of the world, but the God of Israel who came in the form of Jesus Christ to die on a cross. The Pilgrims and Puritans were Christians who were fleeing the Catholic church in England that would not allow them to worship God Almighty freely and so the first Thanksgiving in America was a Christian celebration with prayers and such. The food was there -- sure -- but it was at it's beginnings not just an excuse to eat great meals, but rather a celebration to honor God.

For the most part we have lost the "thanksgiving" in the holiday today in America. How many people will go through their family holiday meal and yet never bow their head to even thank God for the food that they are about to consume? How many of them that do pray will do so with insincere and uninvolved hearts? The American holiday today is one of turkey and dressing, cranberry sauce, stay home from work, watch football, eat desserts, spend time with family, and get up early the day after to hit the sales at the beginning of the shopping season. Those things in themselves are not evil, but we must realize that if we partake of all of these things and yet leave God out of it and never take time to really give thanks for all that we have, then it has just become another secular holiday and is not a true Thanksgiving feast! In other words, it is possible to celebrate Thanksgiving holiday without having thanksgiving in your heart, and that is not a true Thanksgiving feast as God meant for us to have.

In scripture, the terms "thanksgiving" and "thanks" are always accompanied by verbs such as "offer" and "give." "Offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving." "Giving thanks." Thanksgiving is something that you must do. Never is it ever said "eat to give thanks" but rather we should "give thanks" when we eat. There was a offering in Moses' law called a "thanks offering" where a gift was given to God. And so from all of these scriptures it is clear that doing nothing is not giving thanks. You must express thanksgiving. It involves motion and action. God viewed it as a sacrifice just as any other mode of worship. Thanksgiving is something that you give from yourself and a true Thanksgiving feast involves people giving thanks to others. If the festival is only about being off of work and getting this and getting that, then we have taken thanksgiving out of our November.

I'm glad you are here today in service because there is something right about coming in the house of God this week of all weeks and praising God! There's something right about glorifying and magnifying Him today. Because if it is thanksgiving, therefore let us give thanksgiving! We will receive food in a little while. We will continue to receive all week. We will fulfill our traditions, but let's begin our true Thanksgiving feast, here today! Why don't we offer up something to God today? Why don't we put some expression in our gratitude? It should be a moment of praise and worship. It should be a moment where we give to others a thankful heart. It should be a time of expression of sincere gratitude in our life. Thanksgiving must have true thanksgiving. Even in November, let's not forget the reason for the season.

It is the Gospel of John that tells us that Jesus participated actively in the Jews' "Thanksgiving-type" feast. John chapter 10 reads:

Although Jesus showed up, unfortunately all we have recorded of His activities in this feast is a confrontation with the Jewish leaders and His being driven out of their celebration. The argument was that Jesus was revealing to them His true identity: the Christ, God in flesh come to save His people, and the Jews were rejecting Him. The scripture goes on to say that when Jesus said:

And so we find that because of their refusal to believe that Jesus was truly God in flesh, Jesus was forced to escape from their clutches and they returned to their Thanksgiving celebration missing the very thing that they should have been thanking God for the most! To my mind, surely a visit from God Almighty and all of the miracles that He had wrought in their midst was deserving of thanksgiving! Surely of all the things that they had received good for that year, the coming of Jesus into their life was the most blessed thing that deserved giving God glory and gratitude for it! And yet, in the midst of all of their ritual and traditions, they made the grave mistake of leaving God's workings out of it. Like so many American will do this week, they made the mistake of having a thanksgiving celebration without truly having any thanksgiving towards the source of their greatest blessings.

In our text we read the commandment of scripture that rings loud and clear for this time of the year:

The commandment is not just to give a sacrifice of thanksgiving, but to give it "to God." Offer it to God Almighty. Give Him the glory! It's not that we should just be grateful, but that we should be grateful to Him! It's not that we should just have an attitude of gratitude, but that we should have an attitude of gratitude towards Him! To have a true thanksgiving God must be the recipient of our praise.

And notice that the phrase "pay your vows to the Most High" is linked with the commandment of thanksgiving. If God has blessed you, then you owe it to Him to praise Him. If God has done anything good for you, then you ought to offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving today in this service.

Somebody needs to be reminded of what James told the church:

There are those who have had good things happen this year who would be reluctant to give God Almighty the credit for those things. I've known people to get a raise and you say, "well, praise God!" and they reply, "God did not have anything to do with it: I worked hard for this raise and got it on my own merit." I've heard people come through a surgery okay and heal up fine and they were quick to give the doctors credit but reluctant to allow that God maybe got involved. And I'm not talking just about unbelievers but people who professed to be Christians act that way!

To you with such an attitude of reluctance to give God the glory for the good things in your life, I say: "you fool! Don't you realize that the very breath that you breathed every morning and day at work earning your raise was a gift given to you by God? Don't you realize that every motion was fueled by strength and life that was created by God? Don't you realize that without His mercy and power, you would not have survived to be here today? Don't you know that if it wasn't for God wanting you to be here to come and hear the Word of God, you might not even be alive!? Don't you realize that the doctors can only use the healing processes of the body that were placed there by the Great Physician? Who do you think created the atoms and chemicals that make up the medicines that they use to treat you? Who do you think caused the sun to shine that grows the plants that produces the substances with which they worked? You'd better to give glory to God because you owe it to Him after all that He's done for you!

Every good thing is a gift from God. That means that breath in your body is a gift from God. That means that if you are pain free today, you have been blessed. Coming to church is good thing, feeling God's presence is a good thing, hearing the Word of God is a good thing, being able to eat a meal is a good thing. Without a doubt, God has been good to everyone of you today! Because all of you have received something good this year, you ought to know that God was in all of it. He is worthy to be given praise and thanksgiving! Don't be like the Jews and get so caught up in your rituals and holidays that you leave Jesus Christ out of it! His working in the flesh is the most important part that you need to recognize! His doings are the most deserving of praise and glory!

I think somebody here needs to look back over this year where it seemed that a blessing and a good thing seemed to come from a human source, and realize how that God was in it. We should give honor where honor is due, and you need to express thanks to those who have blessed us physically, but if you would look at the situation with spiritual eyes and probe beneath the surface you would find the fingerprints of God Almighty! He was behind that good thing and as such He ought to be praised! If you want to have a true thanksgiving then you must offer that thanksgiving to the God of Glory who gives all good things!

The Apostle Paul in writing the church at Ephesus, said:

Giving thanks for "all things" unto God. All things. We should thank God for "all things." Think about what that means a moment. Such a little phrase and commandment says much.

All things. That means that we should give God thanks for the large blessings in your life. Just about all of you who are living for God can probably think of a large blessing or a large gift that God gave you this year. Maybe He saved your family. Maybe He healed your body of cancer. Maybe He put back a lost relationship and restored a friend. Maybe He delivered you ought of a desperate situation. Maybe He blessed you with an unexpected give of a thousand dollars or more. In eleven months, most of us can think of something great that God has done for us. If you can't think of something great that God has done for you or your family in the last year, then you probably haven't served Him completely sold out this past year and let that be a catalyst to you to put a desire to serve Him faithfully for the coming year, because God takes care of His children!

But if you can think of something large that God has done, then you ought to give Him thanksgiving today! You probably praised God at the time you received it, but the week of the victory shouldn't be the only time you praise God for past highs in your life. Have you ever read the Psalms? Have you ever noticed how that hundreds and even thousands of years after the fact, that the people of God were still celebrating and singing about the fact that God created the heavens and the earth and that He delivered Israel from the Egyptians? Certainly we should praise God for what He has done at the moment of victory, but what about weeks and even months later? It's still appropriate to praise Him for it and especially this time of the year! It's Thanksgiving time; let's think back and once again praise God for the great things that He has done.

There is no greater event in your life than salvation. There is no greater gift that you can receive than the gift of the Holy Ghost. There is no greater forgiveness of debt than the erasing of your sins. If God has changed your life and turned you into a new creature, then you have a reason to be thankful today. If God has saved your soul, then you have reason to be grateful. Think back to where you were a year or two back, and yet God got involved and changed you! That's something great and I hope -- like my father-in-law preached -- that you never get over being saved! Don't take it for granted! Maybe you praised God for it then, but it's been a few weeks or months or even years since you've just taken the time to tell God "thank you for the Holy Ghost; thank you for giving me hope; thank you for my change." If so, then let's thank Him for the big things again today!

All things. That means that not only should we thank God for the large things, but the small things also. When God moves in your life mightily it is easy to overlook the small blessings that have come much more frequently. Have you ever noticed that the disciples praised God for the miracles and the calming of the storms and the feeding of the thousands, but not one ever bothered to fall at His feet for the truth that they were receiving at His feet everyday. I never find one of them saying something like "Lord, the miracles are awesome, but we thank you just for letting us serve you." But later on, we find people like Paul wrote about how that they thanked God that He counted them worthy to live and minister for Him.

How about the little things in your life? Has the Word of God helped you to grow this year? If so, then why not thank God for illuminating it to the minister and falling on good ground in your heart. I'm not the originator of the Word, remember, but it His promises that I preach! Has service after service caused you to grow closer to God Almighty this year? Have you a better understanding of truth than you did before? Then you ought to praise God for such little things! Because even the littlest growth spurt in the spirit has placed you closer to heaven. Thank God for the little things.

Sometimes it takes something going awry for us to realize that God has blessed us. A few months ago, our hot water heater went out at the house and we had to go a few days until I could get the time and materials to fix it. It was summer time and yet that cold shower would have you with goose bumps on your goose bumps. Until this year, I had never thanked God for hot water in the house, but since I fixed the hot water heater, I have often got under the stream and said "thank you, Jesus for the privilege of having hot water." It took going without a few days to make me appreciate the small everyday blessings that I daily received!

Why not thank God for the small, everyday things!? Why does it have to be something major for us to worship Him? If you are not starving, then thank Him for food to eat. If you have a roof over you head and a pillow under your neck, then thank Him for it! If you have clothes to wear and a car to drive and a job to work so that you can have money to spend, then you ought to thank the God that has given you such things! If you've got health in your body and a sound mind and a friend that is trustworthy, then give thanks! If you have someone who loves you, then give thanks! If you have smiled any throughout this past year, then give thanks. We should give thanksgiving for all things, both large and small!

All things; that means that we should thank God for the visible and obvious blessings and also the invisible and unseen. Some of you probably think that I'm crazy for even suggesting this. "How can I praise God for something that is unseen, preacher?" I'm glad you asked. The scriptures say about those who serve the Lord and live for Him:

We do not worship angels and therefore we focus more on Jesus Christ than other spiritual creatures, and for whatever angels do, we give God the glory because they serve Him. But understand that although largely invisible and unseen, angels are very real.

The writer of Hebrews wrote:

If you are serving God, then you should know that even though you cannot see it to the physical eye, there is an angelic protection placed around you by God. No evil can befall you unless God allows it to happen. This year, there have been many of you who have seen strangers come by and you paid them no attention and did not even know that they were a visible angel walking by you. This year, for every visible thing that God did, there was at least one or two times that He protected you and kept you and that His angels saved you from harm, that you did not even know anything about.

I've known some people to come into church and say "well, nothing happened today worthy of praise and I wasn't in some dire dilemma so I don't really have anything to praise God about." But it could be that you were not in any obvious distress or trouble simply because God delivered you from that trouble in a unseen manner! If the scripture mean anything, then somewhere in this past year, God delivered you from something that you did not even realize and you neglected to give Him thanks. Today would be a good time to realize that although you may never know what it was that He spared you from, you ought to thank Him for His protecting power and His angelic protection! Thank Him for all things, both large and small; seen and unseen!

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In our text, Paul wrote to the church in Thessalonica:

"In everything give thanks." Not just for all things, but in everything. That means in the good times we should thank God, but it also means that in the bad times we should also thank God. We grasp the need for thanking God for the highs, but the lows? And yet the scripture is very, very clear: in everything, give thanks!

When I think of the command of God to give thanks in the bad times, I think of Daniel who had done only right and yet his enemies wanted him dead and so they tricked the king into signing an order that anyone who prayed to anybody except the king would be put to death. Daniel had been faithful to praying to the God of Israel three times a day and when he knew the decree was signed, he did not waver. Indeed the scriptures say:

Daniel kept doing as he had always done: "praying and giving thanks before his God." Some people would wonder what Daniel had to be thankful for. He was a captive in a foreign land and his enemies had just succeeded in tricking the king into signing his death warrant. "The lions are hungry and roaring, Daniel, what can you possibly be thanking God about?"

I think that Daniel knelt down and thanked God for the enemies and for the decree and for the test and trial because I think that God recorded that Daniel thanked God because he was an example of how we should thank God in everything, even bad times.

Why would God require this? Why would God want this? Because you can only thank God for the bad times if you are trusting in Him completely and totally convinced of His delivering power and faithfulness. To someone who is not trusting in God faithfully, it is impossible to thank God for bad times. It is impossible to kneel in thanksgiving with a den of hungry lions waiting your body. But to someone who has been faithful to God and who is living their life trusting in Him completely, then you can thank God for the bad times and the trials because you know that even though you cannot see it now, God has a purpose for allowing it to happen.

Most of you know that my wife just had a baby, but most of you do not know that at the first part of her pregnancy, she had to change doctors because the doctor whom she had been going to for years basically kicked us out of his office because we did not have insurance and wanted to pay cash. At the time, it hurt. My wife was expecting and we had always paid every bill on time at every past visit and all of a sudden here she is having to look for a new doctor because he basically told us to get lost. It was a horrible experience and one that caused both of us much stress.

But looking back, we can see that God was in it. Slowly, we began to find out some things about the doctor that were unfavorable and questionable. His inattention to the details and signs of abnormal birth caused great pain in the personal experience of a few of our friends. And God worked it out for us to jump over a waiting list to get in with one of the best doctors in San Antonio. My wife had to have a C-section because she had some serious and unforeseen complications. We didn't know that was coming. We didn't know that it was going to be quite as hard at it ended up being. We didn't know that we were going to have to make some tough decisions with the doctor's help. But that's how things turned out and our doctor was very instrumental in how everything turned out. She was pleasant and understanding and didn't give a rip that we were paying cash. And she made the right decision in a hard crossroad during the birth of our child.

When we were leaving the hospital with baby in tow, we got on the elevator and the former doctor was just getting off. He didn't see us, but we saw him. And my wife looked at me and said "can you imagine having to deal with him through what we just went through?" And she and I smiled and she said "thank you, Jesus." What at one time seemed a bad experience and had brought us much pain had actually been used by God who knew what the future held.

And so I preach to someone who cannot yet look back and view your situation with hindsight. If God is perfect and has not failed you and you know of His goodness and great mercy, then you ought to be able to thank God even now in your bad situation and even thank Him for that situation because you know for Him to allow it there must be some purpose for it! Don't ever forget that the scriptures say:

Even though you may not can see how now, if you will be faithful to Him, you can smile knowing that even the most painful experience will turn out having happened for the better. And it will not be an accident, but it will be because God made it that way.

Think of Joseph: God gave him a dream and then he had to endure the persecution of almost being killed by his brothers and being sold into slavery and eventually being in prison in Egypt. But after a while, he was able to stand before the very brothers who sold him into that mess and as the second-in-command of the country say:

"You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good." He was in effect saying, "I can look back and see that the very thing that I thought was destroying my dream was actually the hand of God causing my dream to be fulfilled." If you are serving God today, take heart at your bad situation and give thanks for it because one day you can rest assured that you will know that God was at work and what seemed evil actually brought about goodness into your life! Give thanks in every thing, even the bad times! You can do that when you serve the kind of God that we serve!

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It's not many holidays that you can celebrate and "do the will of God" but Thanksgiving is one that is like that. Everybody wants to know "what is the will of God for me." But our text told us clearly what the will of God for all of us here today is:

Do you want to know the will of God for this service? For your life? For this year is? It is for you to give thanks in everything. It is for you to have a true thanksgiving feast, here, today before you leave! It is for Thanksgiving this year to truly be a thanksgiving to God for all that He has done! Shall we do the will of God today? Those of us who are in Christ should. And to those of you who do not have such a relationship, why don't you repent of your sins, have them washed away by being baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, and allowing God to fill you with the Holy Ghost? Then, next year, you would have 12 months worth of things to thank God about, also!