(Sermon by Pastor Michael D. Schultz 11/21/07)

INTRODUCTION:

During the first part of this week, the forecast called for rain tomorrow.  I’m guessing that most of the people of northern Georgia would not mind at all if their holiday were a rainy day.  I’m sure people would give thanks for that tomorrow.  Of course, if it doesn’t rain, we can probably brace ourselves for more of those depressing helicopter shots of Lake Lanier. 

With 22 locations in Georgia, North Carolina and Alabama, Pike’s Nursery has filed for federal bankruptcy protection.  Dozens of lawn care services are scaling back and laying off workers.  There is a good number of people who will find genuine difficulty in giving thanks in the face of a draught.  Gas prices are $.90 higher than a year ago and expected to climb.  The housing market is taking a hit.  Newscasters are debating whether or not we’re in a recession.  Sometimes it feels as if we have to look back at the war-torn England and France and Germany and Japan of the early 1940’s or the Iraq of today and find reason for giving thanks merely in the fact that bombs are not dropping on us from the sky.

And yet Walmart still has shelves full of everything under the sun.  So do Kroger and Publix.  Toward the east at the end of Web Ginn, another large housing development is going in.  West on Webb Gin (where they’re paving the road), there’s a line of large new homes, beautiful brick and stone, starting from the $600’s.  Right here on Webb Gin, The Avenue is decked out for holiday shopping and Christmas ads and music began way before Thanksgiving to propel shoppers into a buying mood.  People will be spending, maybe not as much, but they’ll be spending.

Will Thanksgiving again be a matter of perspective?  Will there be a difference in the thanks that are given by the “have’s” as compared with the “have-not’s”?  Will we end up comparing what we have to be thankful for today as compared to a year ago or a decade ago?  I’ll be honest with you – Thanksgiving Eve is one of those worship services that is always fairly easy to preach for, because there is a constancy on the part of God that always provides overwhelming cause for thankfulness.

Taking care of business on Thanksgiving Eve has to do with laying out God’s blessings before you and providing you with an opportunity to speak and sing your thanks to God.  The various harvests in the layout of this service are one way of doing that.  But the foundation for giving thanks will always be something that can’t be seen, something that is apprehended by faith alone.

God’s Grace Goes On – And So Does Our Thanks

Just the fact that we know about and tonight can talk about God’s grace is a stupendous, miraculous blessing.  Being a follower of Jesus or a believer in Jesus would not have been our choice.  For all the times that you have been in church and heard about this sinful nature that you have (that we all have), where would you be right now if that’s all you had.  You might very well be thankful for food and family and fun, but it would be a self-centered thankfulness because that’s all our sinful nature is capable of.  If all you had were a sinful nature, all you’d do is pursue your own interests, maybe be kind to people so they would think well of you, do the things that made you feel good (godless things or outwardly good things), but none of it would have the slightest scent or the tiniest hint of thanks to God or love for God.

As people who had nothing but a sinful nature, it’s not that you and I wouldn’t have chosen to be a follower of Jesus or a believer in Jesus.  It’s that we didn’t and we couldn’t.  So there were you and there was I – seething with sinfulness and reprehensible to God.  If you were Jesus and you came from heaven to find a few good people for your team, you’d have turned around and gone straight back to heaven and reported to God the Father and asked, “Were you kidding?   That place has no one who can be in this place.” 

Instead, Jesus saw us all for what we were and became all worked up on the inside because he knew, as he had known forever, that there was only one thing he could do.  He walked straight toward his enemies and said, “I’m the one you want to kill.”  He walked straight toward the hill that looked like a skull and said, “I’m the one who will die as a substitute for all.”  He walked straight out of his grave and told a room full of sinners, “Peace be with you.”

And he walked straight to you and said, “I choose you.”  Sinful nature and all?  No.  Sin paid for and pardoned.  Thanksgiving 2007 has the same theme as Thanksgiving 2006, Thanksgiving 2008 and however many Thanksgivings God may give you: “Jesus chose me.”  Those three words are all it takes to remind us that God’s grace goes on, and those three words are what have us saying, “And so does our thanks.”  Hold onto those three words.

Now let’s spend what time we have left talking about what our thanks will look like and sound like.  It will sound like a hymn of thanksgiving.   It will sound like a dinner prayer of thanks for food.  It will sound like a personal prayer of thanks for family and faith.  But it will also look like a tree full of fruit.  People like us who used to have only a sinful nature now have a new nature, a new compulsion, a new drive to do good things for God, to thank him for choosing us out of the goodness of his own heart and through the goodness of his own Son to be his own children.

What if this Thanksgiving God were reminding us that a major portion of our thanks to him shows up in our love for others?  You heard it.  Jesus said it.  Because of God’s grace and by God’s power, let’s do it.  The person who has treated me like dirt stands before me.  Sincere love is my thanks to God, because Jesus chose me and appointed me to bear fruit.  An opportunity to do the right thing for someone else when you know there will be no appreciation or thanks in return.  Doing it gladly is my thanks to God, because Jesus chose me and appointed me to bear fruit.  A fellow Christian or family member who should know better and still they’re making it extremely difficult to be kind and caring.  Bending over backwards to show love is my thanks to God, because Jesus chose me and appointed me to bear fruit.

A chapter earlier Jesus called himself the vine and us the branches.  The fruit of love shows up because he produces it through us.  In this chapter Jesus says whatever help you need to bear this fruit of love will be given you when you ask for it in the Father’s name.  God’s grace goes on and so does our thanks, in the form of fruit that is pleasing to God and more plentiful than the fruit in any cornucopia you’ll ever see on the cover of a service folder. 

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