Some Benefits of Thanksgiving

Well, we're going to continue talking about the theme of gratitude this morning. We started talking about Thanksgiving gratitude last Sunday, and we're going to do that again today so that this topic will serve as bookends to the Thanksgiving season for us and especially focusing once again on gratitude. The goal is to remind us as believers that, this is to be our disposition. This is to be our habit, not just on Thursday of this past week, or even this past week in its entirety, but this is to be the way that we as believers live every day.

God's word tells us in everything, give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ. Jesus, concerning you. We're taught in God's word to be giving thanks in everything. So that's every day and in every circumstance of every day, we as believers are to be giving thanks to God.

This is our loving God's will for us. He wants the best for us and a part of His loving, perfect. Exquisite will for us is that every moment of every day, we be exuding a spirit of gratitude. Well, last week, just by way of a quick review, we learned some things about Thanksgiving in the New Testament, especially in the book of First Timothy.

We learned that the Greek word for thanksgiving is the prefix that means good and the word grace. So good grace, it means to look at what God has given to us, to pronounce it good, and also to pronounce. It as a grace, as an undeserved blessing from the Lord that we receive in all humility. We don't receive anything that God gives to us with an attitude that, yeah, well, it's the least you could do, Lord.

No, we, we understand the hell that we deserve for our sins, and so any blessing, even a small blessing, is something that we receive with enthusiasm because We see it as a grace from God. We learned last week that we need to be having a ministry of thanksgiving on behalf of all men, including those that are in governing authority. We need to be grateful for everything, including the food that we eat and marriage and everything else that God has created for us to experience and enjoy.

In this world we learned last week that our Thanksgiving should be continuous and probably the biggest lesson that we learned last week is that any thanks that we express should ultimately make its way up to God, right now that doesn't mean we don't thank other people for some blessing that they may.

have rendered in our lives, but that even when we do that, we're thankful for a kindness that someone has shown us. We realize that that kindness ultimately came from God, passed through that person and made its way to us. So we can thank that person, but we also are careful to give thanks to the Lord from whom that blessing has descended. And yet painfully, we have people in our culture that they intuitively know that they need to be grateful, they need to be thankful, but they don't know who to give thanks to, so they just say, well, we need to be thankful.

And sometimes you want to ask people, well, thankful to whom? Who should we give thanks to? And some who are specific might say, as we learned last week, they're thanking the universe, they're thanking Mother Nature, they're thanking life or the Great Spirit or whatever for whatever blessings might come their way, but they're not giving thanks to God and seeing Him as the source of these blessings. And so there's a gratitude there, but it's misdirected because it's not going to the supreme object of our gratitude.

In fact, I got to share this with you. A couple of weeks ago, I was reading on someone's blog site and they were talking about over 20 ways they listed that we could express gratitude and a lot of the suggestions were actually really good. I appreciated them. but one of the suggestions weirded me out.

here, here's the suggestion, word for word. Write a thank you note to yourself. List your many wonderful qualities. Why don't you put it inside a beautiful card and mail it to yourself?

And then so that the reader is not left in any doubt as to what she was talking about, she, this lady had written a thank you note to herself and she provided that on the blog site as a sample of a pattern that you can follow. And as I read this thank you note. She wrote to herself, she was like, thank you for all you do and for your good attitude that you have and all the stuff that you put up with and it was full of that stuff, but at the very end, here's what she said, I'm not making this up.

She said, to sum it all up, you rock.

Thank you for being you. Love yourself. Isn't that neat? No, actually, something was icky about, about this whole thing.

But it is unfortunate that people, they know they should be grateful, but they're not sure who to thank or what to do with that. But we've learned from God's word last week that our thanks should go to God. What we're going to focus on today though is some benefits of Thanksgiving. We're going to focus on, like God tells us to give thanks in all things, and that in a way should be enough for us, but God is also careful in His word to let us in on the fact that if we obey Him and we are grateful and giving thanks in all things, we benefit hugely from that.

There are some very Practical benefits that we will experience just by the thanksgiving that we carry around in our bosom and that we are careful to express to others and then ultimately to God. It turns out, according to the teaching of the Bible that gratitude is a powerful thing for the person possessing. The gratitude, not just in terms of its ability to bless other people, it blesses the holder, perhaps more than anyone else. And even non-believing, Writers and speakers are clued into this.

Anthony Robbins, the great theologian, actually, he's not, he's not a believer, but, but, but his life is given to trying to help people and he's one of the guys that's like really clued into the fact that there's really something special about gratitude. Listen to what he says. For me, appreciation and gratitude. are two of the most spiritual emotions.

Living in this emotional state will enrich your life more than almost anything I know of. Now, we would take issue with him calling gratitude an emotion. Certainly it affects the emotions, but it's a mindset. more than it is an emotion, but nonetheless he understands and he's even experienced in his own life to some degree or another the power, the benefits of gratitude.

I'll read to you the quote that I read to you briefly last week from the pastor John Henry Jowett, who says gratitude is a vaccine, an antitoxin and an antiseptic. This is a guy who obviously He has practiced gratitude and he's like, Man, this is really, this is a, there's a lot of benefits here to holding gratitude in my heart and being careful to give expression of that. It seems to get rid of a bunch of junk and prevent a bunch of junk in my life, and we'll see what some of that is today with the time we have, we'll look at 6 benefits of Thanksgiving.

All right, you want to know what they are.

OK, here we go. Number one, Thanksgiving makes you beautiful. All right, how many of you want to be beautiful? Oh my goodness.

OK. How many of you want to be ugly? OK. All right, man.

Maybe we should just move on then. Oh, Thanksgiving makes you beautiful. I think deep down, all of us want to be beautiful. That's a God-given desire and Thanksgiving makes a person beautiful.

Now, I don't even really need to show you this from the Bible, right? You, you guys already know this is true. because think about the people in your life. I don't think there's anyone in this room that would say, what, Pastor Mel, I don't, I don't understand it, but I feel really attracted to complainers.

Just people that incessantly complain about everything and they're never thankful for anything. I just, I feel drawn to them. I like hanging out with people like that. No, no one would ever give that testimony.

We feel drawn to people that are grateful. They're grateful to God. They're grateful to other people, like the littlest thing. They just seem to receive that and they're blessed by that, and they, they exude this attitude.

Of gratitude, we know intuitively and by experience that thanksgiving or gratitude beautifies a person, but we also find this affirmed in Scripture in Psalm 147 1. The psalmist says, praise the Lord. By the way, praising God, blessing God, giving thanks to God. Those are all synonyms that they have different nuances of meaning, but there's a considerable overlap in their, in their, meaning.

So he says, praise the Lord. We're going to see that that involves Thanksgiving. And that should be enough for us. Just praise the Lord because God commands it.

But the psalmist goes beyond that and actually tells us some things about praise or about thanksgiving that he wants to actually motivate us with. He says, praise the Lord, for it is good to sing praises to our God. And in a context like this, the word that is translated good could be understood as beautiful. It's the Hebrew word tov.

and there are times in the Old Testament where this word is translated as beautiful, like in Genesis 6:2, the Bible says that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were tov, they were beautiful. And Esther 1:11, Queen Vashti. was said to be Tov. She was beautiful, and so this word often has this idea and in a context like this that you'll see in just a second here, the context is one of beauty.

So I would suggest translating this as beautiful. Praise the Lord, for it is beautiful to sing praises to our God. And then he says, for it is pleasant. This is another word for beauty, but it emphasizes more the emotional reaction that it provokes in the beholder of that beauty.

So it is a beauty that one observes and it provokes a feeling of pleasure or delight. In the beholder. And then look what he says. It is beautiful to sing praises to our God.

It is delightful. It is pleasant and praise is becoming. Some of your translations say comely, and some of your translations actually use the word beautiful. So the psalmist is like praise the Lord, for it's beautiful to sing praises to our God.

It's delightful. It's pleasant, and praise is beautiful. It's comely, and we know he's got thanksgiving on the brain because in verse 7, He says sing to the Lord with thanksgiving, sing praises to our God. When we adorn ourselves with gratitude or thanksgiving, it itself is beautiful and it beautifies those who adorn themselves with it.

Our society literally spends multiplied billions of dollars every year on products that are put before us in the beauty industry. with products and cosmetics and Also surgeries that are out there and people invest literally tens of thousands of dollars on these products over the course of a lifetime because these, these products and procedures have the effect of beautifying them. What I want to submit to you is that here is an extremely powerful cosmetic. It's extremely powerful and it's free.

And it's the cosmetic of gratitude or thanksgiving. Adorn yourself with this. Apply this to your person. It will make you a beautiful person in the eyes of God, as well as in the eyes of other people.

In fact, I would also say, That you can spend all kinds of money on these other beautifying products that are out there. You can go through the catalogs. You can buy everything. You can have every procedure done, but if you don't adorn yourself with gratitude, there ain't nothing that can make you pretty.

There's nothing that can make you beautiful or attractive. Thanksgiving beautifies, and so wives adorn yourself with a spirit of Thanksgiving. Husbands, beautify yourselves with a spirit of thanksgiving. Children, children, beautify yourselves with a spirit of thanksgiving and of gratitude.

It beautifies the people. So that's the first benefit of gratitude and thanksgiving. There's a second. benefit of Thanksgiving and that is that Thanksgiving contributes to peace of mind.

Thanksgiving contributes to peace of mind. In other words, it is an antidote to anxiety. It is an antidote to what we would consider anxiety. Anxiety is a major problem in our culture today.

A recent surgeon General report indicated that anxiety is the number one mental health condition. in our culture today that is diagnosed, and I don't know if this is true or not, but I've read it in several, several sources. so I'll just throw it out there, but some of these sources were from medical doctors also, just their observation is that 7 in 10, 7 out of 10 people in hospital waiting rooms waiting to be treated are there because of anxiety. That has either caused some physiological problem, Or it has intensified an already existing physiological problem to where they are in need of medical care.

Almost 20 million people a year in our country alone are diagnosed with excessive anxiety. So anxiety is an issue, and people in our culture are looking for peace of mind. I'm looking for peace of mind. We're all looking for peace of mind, and Thanksgiving.

contributes to that mightily. Look what Paul says in Philippians chapter 4, verse 6. He says, be anxious for nothing. Now be careful how you read that.

You might hear that and say, Pastor Milton, that's one command I do obey all the time. I'm always anxious for nothing. But that's not, that's not what the passage. That's not what the passage is saying.

Basically he's saying don't be anxious about anything, all right? And by the way, what does it mean to be anxious? It means to brood over something as if there were no God who loved you and who was in absolute control over your life, to brood over something as if there were no God who is in heaven who loves you and Who's in total absolute sovereign control over every detail of your life. Paul says, don't do this, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God.

Now look at the promise, and the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. So please look at verse 7 very carefully and understand. That verse 7 is a promise, but it is not a promise for every believer. It is a promise only for those believers who pray.

And not just for those who pray, but those who pray in everything and make their requests known to God. And it's not just specifically only for those that pray and everything making the requests known to God, but it is for those who do that coming into God's presence with thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a critical element of this. There are people who are struggling with anxiety.

They can't get on top of that. And the reason is, is they're not even coming to God. They're not, they're not coming to God in prayer. They're not realizing that wait a minute, this is God speaking, and God is saying, Hey, in everything, come to me.

I want our relationship to go here. Come to me, talk to me. About everything. It can be something happy, something sad, it could be a pleasure.

It could be a pain in your life. You could be on the mountaintop, you could be in the valley. This is our God, our Creator who's saying, come to me in everything. I want our relationship to go there.

I want to be involved by your invitation in every area of your life. Don't turn a blind eye to your problems. Look at your problems, see the needs that arise, and then voice them. To me, Invite me into that.

But he says, when you do so, when you come into my presence, if you really want peace, You need to come to me with thanksgiving. And the promise is that literally the peace of God, as it were, will come out of heaven and it will mount a guard, it will march as a sentinel, as a guard around your heart and mind and protect you and keep your heart and your mind in peace. I have to confess to you guys that like this verse is really precious to me because, I would not have said this like 5, 10 years ago, but, but I would rank anxiety in the top 2 or 3 of my biggest struggles that I find myself, dealing with nowadays, and And I don't know if I'm just being anxious more now than I used to be, or if I'm just getting older and I'm feeling the effects when I'm anxious.

I think maybe when I was young I was physically stronger.

I could be anxious and didn't really feel it physically. Now I'm seriously getting too old to worry and be anxious because I start, I feel it physically more readily. So I think it's probably been an ongoing problem that I just, it was under the radar and I didn't see that it was really a problem. It is a sin and I would just, I would rank that near the top of issues that I find myself.

dealing with and this passage, I have found to be extremely helpful to me, especially the Thanksgiving aspect of this. Because what I have found for me is that when, when I'm anxious, most of the time, it's because I'm obsessing. All right, I, I, I am so locked in on whatever it is that's causing me anxiety that I forget about God. I forget about anything else in my life, especially blessings that I can be grateful for.

In fact, to show you how messed up I can be at times, about a year ago, I was just, just inwardly, just caught up in this whole world of anxiety that left me in my own world, and it was all I could see. And my daughter, Brianna, walked into the room and she was 11 at the time and I looked at her and it was weird. It was like an aha epiphany moment. I was like, that's right, I've got a daughter.

It was like a, a rediscovery. I've got children. What a blessing is that and But my mind had been so just obsessed on what was causing me anxiety that it was like a rediscovery, and I took my daughter and I held her close to me and I was just sitting there going, I've got a daughter. I've got a daughter, and just celebrating that fact as if I never knew it before.

Isn't that crazy? It was hard to confess this, but my therapist told me I needed to share this with you guys. In all seriousness, I had a guy come up to me after the first service and say that exactly happened to me. So I know I'm not the only messed up one, but But here, here's what God is saying, in your moments of situations where you're feeling yourself embroiled in anxiety, come to God, make requests to Him, bring your relationship with Him to bear upon this particular issue that you're feeling anxious about.

And then also give thanks. And so that means that in that moment you're, you're thankful for a number of things. You're thankful that you can come to God and make requests to Him. You're thankful for at least that, that you have a God who actually wants you to talk to Him and everything.

And then also you can look at whatever the hardship is and you can actually honestly biblically thank God for the hardship. Amen. Is it not true Romans 8:28, that God always causes everything to work together for good for those of us that love Him? So even in our hardships, God is doing something for which we can be grateful, that is for our good.

And then even if you look around and you're like, man, I'm so confused, I don't really see much to be grateful for, look upwards and start gazing at God and just start thanking God for who He is. Thank him for his attributes, His power, His love, His mercy, his grace, and then, what, look ahead into the future and start thinking about heaven and thank God for how heaven will be different than your present circumstances. If right now you're being sinned against, then thank God that in heaven, you won't have to deal with that.

If Right now you're being hassled by indwelling sin.

Thank God that in heaven you won't even have to deal with the presence of sin in your life. If right now you're suffering from some great loss or tragedy, thank God that in heaven all of that will be made right and you won't have to deal with that or experience pain anymore. And another thing to do, this is huge, guys, in your moment of anxiety, look into the past. And begin to review the things that God has done in your life in saving you, providing for you, all of his past acts of faithfulness.

Begin to rehearse those and review those and start giving thanks to God for his past moments. Of provision and faithfulness in your life. The psalmist we find even does this in places he's in a situation he doesn't even know how it's going to play out, but what he does? He starts just rehearsing all the stuff God's done in the past and it encourages him with the knowledge that God has been faithful up to this day.

He will prove himself faithful again. So start thanking God for his past acts of blessing, and then even look at your present, back away from this thing you're obsessing about and, and, and notice. your daughter and your son and your spouse and, and the sunrise and the sunset and, and realize, what, even in my present, if I just look, there's so much that I can thank God for. And one of the disciplines I would encourage you to practice is in moments where you're especially struggling with anxiety, you're coming to God, you're going to make requests of him.

But God says, hey, I want you to do it with thanksgiving. So do that. Don't just voice requests, but say, I'm going to do some Thanksgiving here. And I would, I would challenge you to do this before you make a single request to God, just tell yourself, what?

I'm going to think of 10 things that I'm grateful for. God, give me eyes to see 10 things that I'm grateful for, from my past, my present, or my future. And, and I'm going to express those to you. Then when you're done, the problem's still there, usually, go ahead and address the problem and make request of God.

It won't take the problem away, but it will provide a larger context of gratitude and of God's faithfulness within which you can see and deal with and have a right perspective on whatever it is that you're facing that's causing you anxiety. Thanksgiving makes you beautiful and it also contributes mightily to peace of mind. I know every one of us in this room, we got tons to worry about, don't we? We need peace of mind, so let us practice what we're told to do here in Philippians 4, and God's peace will come to our aid and march around us and guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

There is a third benefit of Thanksgiving. And that is that Thanksgiving gives you perspective in the midst of heart-wrenching loss. It gives you perspective in the midst of heart wrenching loss. This is something I've been thinking about over the last, year or so.

shared it with my family a handful of times cause it just, it just, it keeps coming out. But, you hear news like Steven Curtis Chapman losing his daughter. And that happened a couple of years ago, and when I heard the news of that, you always put yourself in the shoes of someone like that and you're just asking how, how would I deal with that? How would I deal with that?

Greg Laurie loses his son. A little over a year ago and you hear the news of that and your heart goes out to the family and at the same time you imagine yourself in their situation and you're like, how, how would I deal with that? Is my faith able to handle something like, like that? And then you don't really know the answer to that until the moment comes, but then you're asking, how do I get ready for that particular day.

The truth is that that day will come for just about all of us. You cannot make your way through this fallen world without at some point being leveled to the ground with heartrending loss and pain. And some of you have already been there. Some of you have been there more than once.

And what that feels like. And so it's like, how do we deal with that? And, and those of us that are not there right now, how do we, how do we ready ourselves for that so that when it comes, we have the right perspective? And I don't, I don't even know all the right answers to that question, but, but I have found some perspective in the book of Job.

Job, you guys know the story. In Job one, God gives the devil permission to take everything away from Job except his health, so he loses his sons and his daughters and, and all of his wealth, and in one heartrending, devastating day, Job basically loses everything except his health. And yet this is how he responded. He says, naked I came from my mother's womb.

I came into this world with nothing. And naked I shall return. I'm going to leave this world with nothing. And then he says, the Lord gave.

Please notice what he's doing. He's not so caught up in his loss on that day that he forgets about all of the hundreds and thousands of days that God has been lavishing blessing upon him, the children God had given him, his sons and his daughters, and every enjoyment, every blessing, every pleasure that came as a result of that, and all of the wealth he enjoyed. Job on this devastating day is not just focused on what's happening in this day. His mind goes, Back before this day began, and he's saying to himself, the Lord gave, the Lord has given, the Lord has given me so much throughout my life.

And today the Lord has taken away blessed or thanked be the name. The Lord On this day of loss, Job is blessing God. He's giving thanks for all of the past blessings that God had lavished upon him, all that God had given to him. He's blessing the name of the Lord.

To bless is one of those synonyms for giving thanks. We see that in Psalm 100:4, enter his gates with thanksgiving into his courts with praise, give thanks to him and bless His name. And so on this day of loss, he's giving thanks, not just for who God is at the present, but he's giving thanks for every day of blessing that he's enjoyed up to that point. And then you guys know how the story unfolds that God gives Satan permission to touch Job's body, so his body becomes plagued with boils that he's scraping, and he just was no doubt a miserable, hideous sight, and his wife is really upset and to a degree we would understand that.

And she says to Job, just curse God and die. And listen to Job's reply in Job 2:10. But he said to her, You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good?

You see what he's saying there? He's saying, Honey, don't forget the thousands of days that God has been giving us many good things, and we have been receiving that. Shall we indeed be accepting good the way we have up to this day from God, all of the good things we've had are from God and not also accept Adversity. See, Job never lost sight of that.

And so, thinking about some of these other tragedies that people in our church have experienced and then other brothers and sisters like Greg Laurie, Steven Curtis Chapman, it's like, I know, I know those days are going to come. How do I, how do I live in the meantime and get ready for those days of heartrending loss? And I know one thing to do. I know one thing to do.

And that is, I, I'll live every day giving thanks to God for every blessing, large and small. Every day that is void of such tragedy is a gift from God. Every blessing, every cell in my body is a gift from God. Every day that I enjoy good health and those that I love might enjoy good health is a gift from God.

Every time I have Food on my plate is a wonderful gift from God, and I'll receive that as a gift of His grace and give thanks to Him for that. I'll live my life giving thanks to God for His hundreds of thousands and millions of blessings from day to day, so that when that day of loss comes, I can say with Job, the Lord has given. And today he's taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

I hope before God that I would be able to say that, and I know one thing that will help me to say that is to live each day in gratitude now. Let us thank God for blessings, large and small. Charles Spurgeon says, let us praise God for common mercies, for they proved to be uncommonly precious when they are once taken away. He goes on to say, thank God that you could walk to the service and that you're able to walk home.

Thank God for the smallest blessings because when they are taken away, they will loom exceedingly precious. So live with that day in mind. There's a 4th benefit of Thanksgiving. And we won't linger long here, but Thanksgiving keeps you from spiritual ruin.

Thanksgiving keeps you from The spiritual ruin. None of us want to experience the fate that is described in the second half of Romans chapter 1 that starts off talking about those that knew God in their heart of hearts, and yet by the end of the chapter they're doing things worthy of death and giving hearty approval to those that are doing those things worthy of death. In other words, they end the chapter with their souls utterly damned in complete spiritual ruin. And the question is how did they go from in their hearts through natural creation knowing in their heart of hearts that there was a God, how did they go from there all the way to the depths of spiritual ruin and the step by step descent that is described in the second half of Romans 1?

How did they get there, what it was. what it is? It's ingratitude. Look at this verse 21, even though they knew God, they did not honor or glorify Him as God or give thanks.

They didn't see God's blessings as good and as a grace from God that they should give thanks for. And then look at this, they, they don't give thanks and so look what happens next, they became futile. And their speculations, their foolish heart was darkened, professing to be wise, they became fools. And, and the progression is this God reveals Himself to them through creation.

They don't glorify or give thanks to Him. God then gives them over to the lust of their heart. God gives them over to degrading sexual passions. God gives them over to depraved minds full of sin.

They engage in and give hearty approval to those things that are worthy. Of death and they're forever ruined. And the first step towards spiritual ruin was in gratitude. Young people, Yeah, if you, if you do one thing.

Be a grateful person. don't take life for granted. Don't take God's blessings for granted. Don't take the parents that God has given to you for granted.

Be the person where you, you are, you are saying thanks in your heart and you're even verbalizing that all the time, giving thanks to God for every blessing. Every blessing, and you're expressing that thanks even to other people, rather than living as if you're entitled to this or that or the other. No, you, you're, you're grateful for any blessing, however small. And if you can live your life with this gratitude, you will keep your foot from the path of foolishness, arrogance, and ruin.

That leads to a 5th benefit of Thanksgiving, and that is the Bible actually teaches that Thanksgiving is an antidote to sexual sin. Did that? Thanksgiving is an antidote to all forms of sexual sin, whether it's fornication, adultery, sexual sin in your thoughts, in your actions, or in your speech. It is the ultimate antidote to sexual sin.

Look what Paul says in Ephesians chapter 5. He says, but immorality or any impurity or greed, and that word greed means to have more. It's that insatiable lust for more and in the context, he's talking about sexual greed. It's someone who can't get no satisfaction and, and they're going after this experience and this experience and the next one.

In, in a search for that satisfaction that never completely comes. So it's a sexual greed, immorality, any impurity, sexual greed must not even be named among you as is proper among saints, and there must be no filthiness and silly talk or coarse jesting. That, that's speaking of, sexual sins that are committed through speech, making light of immorality, making light. Of evil, making a joke out of it, telling stories that are, that, that cause others to stumble that cause you yourself to stumble.

I think it would also include listening to to those things, listening to others speak of these things that are coarse, that are filthy, that are immoral. There's so many lyrics, songs that are out there. Nowadays that are just laden with I want to say sexual innuendo, but it's not even innuendo., we had some celebrity this past week sing a song like that, and he had the audacity to act out what he was singing about, and people call in complaining and rightly so, but if he would have never acted out those things, would people have called in offended by the lyrics?

That's the songs that are being sung nowadays.

He was merely doing the wickedness of the lyrics that he was singing and putting on display. That's the culture in which we live, so Paul is saying immorality, impurity sexual greed, filthiness, silly talk, coarse jesting, or listening to and being enjoying those things, set all of that aside and in its place, look what he says, which are not fitting, but rather, giving of thanks. Now how many of you would have expected Paul to say that? I would have expected Paul to say, set all of this immorality aside and in its place, be sexually pure or be holy.

But he doesn't say that. Instead, he says, giving of thanks. What he's teaching us is to replace immorality in all of its forms with thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is the ultimate antidote.

to sexual sin. Ironside, says this, and this is so true. He says unthankfulness is connected to unholiness. Thankfulness and gratitude to God and holiness of heart and life are linked intimately together.

You guys believe that? The question is what does gratitude have to do with preventing sexual sin? Here's the picture we need to have in our minds. Take all that God has given to us legitimately for us to enjoy all of the bounty that God provides for us, not only a relationship with Him and holiness and purity, but even material blessings and the blessings of relationships and the sunrise and sunset and all the other things that we legitimately righteously can enjoy on God's good earth.

Take all of that bounty, draw a circle around it, and then look up in the face of God and you see a God who's passionate about what He's given you. He's like, Oh man, I want you to enjoy this. Like he said to Adam and Eve as he created the garden for them, he says, of everything in this garden you may freely eat. It's not just a command to eat.

I'll let you eat. No, it's a command to gorge themselves on what God has passionately provided for them. I'm sure they could look around in that garden and see the exuberance of God for them and providing all this stuff for them to gorge themselves on. So draw a circle around all those things in your life and God says, Listen, I'm excited about these things I've provided for you.

Gorge yourself. Enjoy this bounty with thanksgiving. But here's what we often do. We stand on the outskirts of that circle, and instead of looking at these blessings, we're turned the other way and we're looking at all the stuff God's prohibited and forbidden.

And we're like, man, I, that'd be nice to do and man, I'd love to do that and I dare not do that, but I can entertain that in my mind, and we start obsessing on what God has prohibited, and it's not long before we're outside of the circle of what He's provided, and we're doing what He has forbidden. Does that make sense? Paul says, here's the cure. You who are faced this way, turn around, all the way around.

Look at what God has provided. And give thanks. Enjoy with an attitude of Thanksgiving. And gratitude, I would encourage you guys to really ponder.

how Thanksgiving can be the antidote to sexual sin. You're tempted to look at pornography on the internet. And in that moment, you really wanna stop and just say, is my life under God so dry that I must find refreshment here? Are there no pleasures that God has given?

To satisfy my desire for life and for cheer and for pleasure, and then turn from that wickedness and just God would say, just dive into the pleasures that I have made available for you and enjoy them with gratefulness. It is a powerful antidote to immorality. Lastly, I, I'll just throw this at you. All of the benefits that we have seen thus far are personal benefits.

This is a benefit that extends beyond yourself. To the impact you can make on other people, and that is that Thanksgiving edifies others who hear you. It edifies others. who hear you.

Not only are you blessed, but those who hear your words of thanksgiving, they're edified. They're changed for the better. Look at what Paul says. He's dealing with the Corinthians who were, the problem was they were speaking in tongues in church gatherings without an interpreter present, so they're speaking in a tongue and no one can understand what they're saying.

That's the problem, Paul says, because no one can say amen at what you're saying. So look what he says. Otherwise, if you bless in the Spirit only, how will the one who fills the place of the ungifted say the amen at your giving of thanks? So those that were speaking in tongues were giving thanks to God, but the people around them couldn't understand, so they couldn't say amen.

Look what he says. He can't say amen since he does not know what you're saying. For you in a tongue are giving thanks well enough, but the other person who hears you is not edified because he doesn't understand what you're saying. I know that raises a million questions.

Can we learn one lesson from this? When a believer gives thanks to God, In a manner that is understandable by those who hear. It edifies those who hear. Is that legit?

and if you want a simple definition of edify, it means to change someone for the better. When you give thanks to God in the presence of other people, and they hear you do that, they are left changed for the better. You can have a transforming effect upon other people. I shared with you guys a few weeks ago this just from a slightly different angle, and I'll wrap this up.

27 years and 2 weeks ago, at the very end of a Christian conference that I was attending, the speaker of that conference in the last hour or so spent time telling story after story after story, praising God for some really amazing things God had done in this man's life and providing in miraculous ways. He was basically giving thanks to God, giving glory to God. And I sat there at the very end of that conference, having, not having been moved through just about anything else that was said, and when it came time to close my eyes in prayer at the end, I said, God, I don't know what all this is going to entail, but I want what he has.

When I look back, there were a variety, just a confluence of factors that informed what happened in that moment.

But one of those was, here's a brother in Christ up front, giving thanks to God, giving glory to God and praising God for who God is, what his character is like, and the amazing things God had done in this man's life. And I sat there as an 18 year old and I listened to that, and it forever changed my life. I was forever changed. By hearing this person, giving thanks to God.

Don't ever underestimate mom, dad, brother, sister. Don't ever underestimate the impact you can have on others by living each day in a spirit of gratefulness and giving expression to that. Let me ask you to bow your heads. We're going to look to the Lord in prayer and ask God to help us to To live this way.

We're also gonna provide you an opportunity to give of your offerings to the Lord and we would, we would encourage you to give as the Lord leads you to give and Let's pray and ask God's help upon us all. Lord, You take your gifts seriously to us. You, if we could see your countenance, Lord, you are so exuberant. You are so passionate and excited about the bounty that you give to us.

And then how many days do you look upon our face, and there's like, we're not grateful, maybe we're even discontent, we treat it as an entitlement. Maybe we're thinking about what you didn't give. Maybe we're sniffing out what's outside of the bounds of what you have provided and we're lusting after what you have not given to us to enjoy. Oh Lord.

We have far to go, but how inviting such a life is that to live just a life where we're just celebrating you and celebrating your gifts, large and small everyday. The benefits that accrue to us are just enormous, Lord. So help us to walk. And this gratitude that we're learning about.

And be enriched and beautified by it. And be a genuine blessing to others. We thank you, Lord, for the privilege of giving of our offerings to you. We ask that you would support, use these funds to accomplish your work in this community and around the world.

Thank you for allowing us The unbelievable privilege of being able to give and participate in these things. We don't just give our funds to you, Lord, but we also give ourselves to you as an offering of surrender to You. In Christ's name we pray, and all God's people said,