Tell Your Thanks

Aricle by: Nathan Brooks

Pastor, Glorieta Baptist Church

​1Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever!
2Let the redeemed of the LORD say so,
whom he has redeemed from trouble
3and gathered in from the lands,
from the east and from the west,
from the north and from the south. 
(Psalm 107:1-3)

​​This year, you may have a harder time being thankful at Thanksgiving.

Aside from the obvious effects of a pandemic, there are the ever-present heartbreaks and suffering of life in a fallen world. When we walk through tragedy, it continues to walk with us even after we’ve gotten through it. We may get through it, but we never get over it. Tragedy and suffering get grafted into our story. ​

Adversity Becomes Testimony

​But here’s what is beautiful about that same suffering. For Christians, those same stories of adversity not only get grafted into our stories, but they can also be grafted into our testimonies.

​It’s those stories of difficulties that become part of our story, part of our narrative. And it’s those stories that give us the opportunity to say something about God, something that we would never be able to say had we not walked through that specific tragedy.

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God’s rescue and restoration out of disaster
​is a reason for praise and thanksgiving.

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​It’s those stories of tragedy that, by God’s grace, can become stories of God’s grace and intensifiers of our thanksgiving. They become the places our minds travel back to in the middle of gathered worship, sitting at traffic lights, or sharing a family meal. We remember the faithfulness of God in our suffering and it fuels our thanksgiving all the more. 

​​We see this reality in scripture as well; God’s rescue and restoration out of disaster is a reason for praise and thanksgiving. Or you could say it in reverse; praise and thanksgiving is a response to God’s rescue and restoration out of disaster.

​Some of the clearest examples of this reality are found in the songs of the people of the Old Testament; the book of Psalms. In the Psalms, we get a glimpse into the people of God walking through adversity, coming out the other side saying, “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good!”

God’s people tell their thanks to the Lord.
​
“Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever!” (Psalm 107:1)

Here, the Psalmist is not talking about Thanksgiving, the holiday. He is talking about the giving of thanks. Something that is so much a part of the DNA of the people of God that it is stated as the first line of this Psalm. But notice two things here about this first verse.

1) Thanks to God should be thanks expressed. Psalm 107:1 says, “Give thanks to the Lord.” The expectation here in verse 1 is a thanksgiving confessed, or spoken. And in context here, it is a confession of thanks in light of his goodness, in light of his love. We might call this the Thanksgiving Loop: We experience the goodness of God and we give thanks to God.

2) God’s people here are not just giving thanks. They are giving thanks to the Lord. Why? Because “his love endures forever”. In other words, their thanks has a trajectory. It is aimed at something. The trajectory of thanksgiving is toward God.  Why? Because God’s people know that it is God who gives all things. God is sovereignly ruling over all things. God is faithfully loving his people forever.

This is where we must guard ourselves from being taught more by the culture than by God’s word.  In general, society has de-linked Christian holidays with Christianity. ​​Christmas is about Santa Clause and toys. Easter is about bunnies and eggs. As followers of Jesus, we must be careful that when it comes to how we give thanks that we are taught by God’s word and not by the culture we are in. 

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God is faithfully loving his people forever.

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​For Christians, Thanksgiving has a trajectory. We must not de-link what we are thankful for from who we are thankful to. This Thanksgiving, put a stake in the ground that you will reclaim the biblical idea of giving thanks to the Lord. 

God’s people tell their thanks to others.

“Let the redeemed of the LORD say so,
whom he has redeemed from trouble
and gathered in from the lands,
from the east and from the west,
from the north and from the south.” (Psalm 107:2-3)

In these verses, the word redeemed carries the idea of redemption from exile. God, in a sense, bought these people out of exile, or slavery. That means every time they read or sang this psalm, they remember their exile. To be addressed as one who is redeemed calls attention to their sin, their mess. In other words, verse 2 doesn’t say, “Let the perfect tell their story.” Perhaps you’ve been around people who are “perfect”. No one wants to hear their story. 

No, Christians have a wonderful story of redemption to tell because they needed to be redeemed and bought back! And this is what God does for his children.

​On the cross, God redeems his children by punishing Jesus, His Son. The punishment for sin was carried out on Jesus, so that God might gather to himself a people from the east, west, north, and south. Or, as John witnessed in Revelation 7:9, “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages”. Lord God, thank you! You redeemed us by paying the price of our sin. 

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Lord God, thank you! You redeemed us by paying the price of our sin. 

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​Through the cross of Jesus, God takes our stories of adversity and tragedy and he redeems them and turns them into stories of his redemption. 

Christian, this Thanksgiving, in the middle of a pandemic, in the middle of the ever-present heartbreaks and suffering of this life, remember this; the ones who have been redeemed from the curse of sin by Jesus, the perfect Son of God, are precisely the ones who have, now and evermore, a thanks to tell!