Every Tuesday before Thanksgiving, MVBC has a Thanksgiving Service. The setup is pretty simple. We sing, listen to a brief Thanksgiving devotional, and then, one by one the congregation shares what they are thankful for. This year thanks were given for grace to evangelize in the midst of cancer, strength to get through a difficult season in school, mercy to see where a marriage needed to grow, and many hands willing to work with toddlers every Sunday morning. We were thankful for many things.
But most of all, we are thankful for God. It is God in whom we live, and move, and have our being. It is God who sustains us, pours out his mercy on us, and fills us with his Spirit. We are the people of God because of God's grace.
I had the privilege of starting off the time of thanksgiving with a devotional. You'll find it below. In the midst of turkey and sweet potatoes, green been casserole, and warm bread--I pray you remember not only that God is the giver of all good gifts, but as I said on Tuesday, "Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD God Almighty."
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My text for tonight’s Thanksgiving Devotional is Psalm 7:17, “I will give thanks to the LORD the thanks due his righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the LORD, the Most High.”
Satan tries to convince us we cannot or should not pursue God directly. Satan does this a number of ways. First, he makes you think your problems are too small to bother the Maker of the Universe. Second, he makes you feel embarrassed to ask for God’s help when there are other people with such greater need. Third, overwhelms you with thoughts of your own sin so that you don’t feel worthy to go the LORD in prayer. Fourth, he keeps you so busy with work and leisure that you don’t feel like you have the energy to engage God mano-o-mano. Fifth, keeps you from suffering so that you don’t feel the need for God. Sixth, at times, he keeps you in suffering, so that you grow to resent God, and thus stay away.
Regardless of Satan’s tactics, none of us should stay away. We should all go to God in times of prayer. We should go to him because God cares.
David, by the way, knew a thing or two about suffering. He wrote this Psalm after his son, Absalom, initiated a civil war. Absalom was a charismatic figure. We’re told in 2 Samuel 14:25 that “in all Israel there was no one so much to be praised for his handsome appearance as Absalom.” He had the good looks of the Man of Steel actor, Henry Cavill and the tongue of JFK. But instead of using his gifts to serve the LORD, Absalom stole the kingdom from his dad. He turned the hearts of the people against David. King David received thousands of letters of complaint. And it got to him. And it’s these feelings of loneliness, doubt, and despair that led him to turn to the LORD in prayer.
If you just run your eyes over Psalm 7, I don’t think you’ll see anything too surprising. David takes refuge in God and takes comfort in the fact that God is a just Judge. But notice how the Psalm ends. Verse 17, “I will give thanks to the LORD the thanks due to his righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the LORD, the Most High.” David is in despair. Many people are against him. But he doesn’t end with a plea for help. He doesn’t end by asking for anything. He doesn’t even thank God for what he’s done. He thanks God for who he is; God isrighteous, holy.
What does this mean? It means we should be thankful that God is holy. In fact, King David is urging us to be mostthankful that God is holy. There is nothing more important than recognizing not only that there is a God, but that this God is holy. And let me be clear: the holiness of God isn’t merely one of many attributes of God that we should be thankful for—like his love, and his kindness, and his wisdom. It is his preeminent attribute. The one we should be most thankful for. As one author put it:
If any, this attribute has an excellency above the other perfections of God. There are some attributes of God which we prefer because of our interest in them and the relation they bear to us: as we esteem his goodness before his power, and his mercy whereby he relieves us . . .. [But] Where do you find any other attribute trebled in the praise of it? “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
I want to give you four reasons to be most thankful for the holiness of God:
1. Because the holiness of God means you can trust him. What good is it to say that God is sovereign, if I can’t also say that God is holy? I met a man last night whose stepfather beat him. His stepfather was sovereign over him. But his stepfather was an evil man. I love being at a church that embraces the sovereignty of God. But I am thankful, especially, that my sovereign God is holy.
2. Because the holiness of God means he is incomprehensible. I am a Christian theologian. I spend my days thinking and teaching about God. But I am like a miner trying to scoop gems out of a cave with a plastic spoon. There is something about the holiness of God that shuts my mouth. How can I understand what it means to say that God is holy? To whom do I compare God? He is the standard of holiness. He is, wrote A.W. Tozer, “beyond the power of human thought to conceive or human speech to utter.” I am thankful that I do not have to defend God, he does not exist to be solved like a Rubik’s Cube—he exists to be worshipped with as much knowledge of him as he allows me to have. He is holy.
3. Because the holiness of God means I can know myself. What happened to the Prophet Isaiah after God cracked open the door of his holiness? Isaiah said, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” To see God for who he is, is to know me for who I am. Left to my own devices, without God’s aid and intervention, I am not good, unclean, unreliable, inhospitable. I am not holy, holy, holy. I am guilty, guilty, guilty. It is good for me to know this. Because it brings to light how much I need God. He is holy.
4. Because the holiness of God means that I can be holy. It’s easy to take for granted the food in our pantry, the clothes in our closet, and the roof over our heads. It is even easier to take for granted the fact that God imputes his holiness to us. That’s what the cross is about. Jesus, the Holy One, took my guilt and gave me his holiness. So that I stand before you today a saint. I am not yet perfect—that must wait for heaven. But today, right now, when God sees me, he sees the holiness of Jesus Christ.
And so, you see, I am thankful, so thankful that God is righteous, that he is holy. And as we share, now, the work that God has done in our lives, may we remember, first and foremost, who God is, and like David, “sing praise to the name of the LORD, the Most High.”
Happy Thanksgiving!
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