Sermon - Thanksgiving 2018 - Deuteronomy 8:1-10

“What are you thankful for?” I’m sure that’s going to be the question going around the Thanksgiving dinner table. I know of some congregations who pass around slips and ask everyone to write what they’re thankful for and then have them read aloud before the congregation. Many commercial advertisements and promotionals even ask people what they’re thankful for. That’s the question of the season! 

What are some of the common responses? Health, home, family, friends, food, and jobs. Don’t get me wrong, those are wonderful things to be thankful for, afterall, they’re first article gifts. As we confess in the explanation to the first article of the creed: “I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes care of them. He also gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all I have. He richly and daily provides me with all that I need to support this body and life.”

These first article gifts are wonderful gifts from God and we should be grateful for them. In fact, this is why we pray that God would continue to give us these gifts in the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread.” Luther explains: “God certainly gives daily bread to everyone without our prayers, even to all evil people, but we pray in this petition that God would lead us to realize this and to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.”

However today I would like to take a momentary break from our focus on these first article gifts and contemplate our second article gifts, for as the Lord declares through His servant Moses: “God humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.” Today, I would like us to look beyond the daily bread, and look to that which God wants our eyes to see and our ears to hear: “every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” For that Word is what truly gives us life. Therefore, on this Thanksgiving, we give thanks to the Lord for His Word, by keeping His commandments, walking in His ways, and fearing Him.

Firstly, the greatest thing we have to be thankful for is the Word of God. Did you notice, that in all three of our readings today the Lord allowed His people to be impoverished so that they would focus on the Word of God instead of their first article gifts. In Deuteronomy, the Lord disciplined His people by leading them into the wilderness to wander around for forty years. These were a people stubborn and hard necked, they were haughty and trusted in themselves… so not too different from us. 

The Lord made His beloved, chosen people wander around in the wilderness so “that He might humble them, testing them to know what was in their heart, whether they would keep His commandments or not. And He humbled them and let them hunger.” Well that’s not very nice! What a big meany! 

No, God isn’t nice. He’s not always agreeable, He not always sunshine and butterflies, He doesn’t just let things slide. He’s not nice. He’s good. It’s because He is good that He allows His children to suffer. He allowed Paul to suffer in prison, from which He wrote today’s reading, in order that Paul might learn to give thanks to God and be content in any situation. It’s because He is good that He allowed the Israelites to suffer in order that they might be humbled and learn to rely upon Him for all of their daily needs. It’s because He is good that He allowed ten men to contract leprosy so that they may be forced to hear the Word of God. God disciplines us, allows us to suffer, so that we may be brought to hear His Word, to hear Jesus.

For this Jesus is the incarnate, the enfleshed, Word of God. This Word of God was in the beginning with the Father by whom all things were made. This Word of God is full of grace and truth, and from from His fullness we have all received grace upon grace. Into this Word of God we are baptized and given the right to be children of God. In this Word of God is life, and this life is the light of men. In this Word of God we live because the enfleshed Word of God hung upon the cross to redeem us from our sins. 

You may not immediately appreciate it or recognize it, but God’s Word is far more powerful than you might at first believe. It is God’s Word which sustained the Israelites in the wilderness, it is God’s Word which granted Paul contentment in prison, it is God’s Word that brought healing to the ten lepers, it is God’s Word which imparts faith to your doubting heart, and it is God’s Word which gives you everlasting life in the name of Jesus.

For this Word of God today we give thanks! But how do we give thanks to God for His Word? Do we just say “Thanks God!” and call it good? Not quite. Let us learn from scripture how to give thanks to God for His Word. “So you shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God by walking in His ways and by fearing Him.” The way that we give thanks to God for His Word is by keeping His Word.

This isn’t very different than how you give thanks for gifts you receive regularly. For example, when your aunt makes you a blanket, you don’t just say thank you and then throw the gift away. That’s rude, unkind, and reveals that you are ultimately ungrateful for the gift. You’re ungrateful for all of the energy and expense your aunt sacrificed for you. Instead, you say thank you, and then you use the blanket. You’re not supposed to do what you usually do and just bring the blanket out of storage before your aunt arrives to make it look used, that’s still dishonest and reveals your ungrateful heart. Rather, you wrap yourself up in the blanket, you lay it at the foot of your bed; you give thanks for the blanket by using the blanket.

Just like that blanket, we are to give thanks to God for His Word by using it! By keeping the commandments! By walking in His ways! By fearing the Lord our God! God has given us a great treasure in His Word, a treasure which we cannot live without, a treasure more important than the daily bread of God’s first article gifts. Showing up and saying thanks is meet, right, and salutary, but if after that we ignore the Word or even toss it aside, we reveal our dishonesty and ungratefulness for it. We reveal our ungratefulness for Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross. It’s not enough to just bring the Bible out of storage or dust it off before pastor shows up and then forget about it until the next time he visits - that’s not gratitude for the Word, that’s just making face. 

To be grateful for the treasure of God’s Word means to delight in it and spend your time in it. It means that you regularly read it, hear it, sing it, teach it, memorize it, and obey it. It means that you live out God’s Word in your daily life, applying it to yourself and using it to direct your actions. 

This won’t always be easy mind you. Remember what I said about God? That He’s not nice, He’s good? Well God’s Word isn’t always going to be nice and easy. Keeping His Word may not be the most fun or exciting thing, it may turn out to be miserable even. But God’s Word is good. It’s good because Jesus, the incarnate Word, made it good and fulfilled it on Good Friday when He bore the agony of your cross. 

Because it’s not easy, I know that we have all failed to keep His Word. We sin against it, we speak against it, we reject it, we ignore it, and we forget it every day of our lives. And if God’s Word were nice, it would just brush over our sins and Christ wouldn’t have died to take away our sin. But thank God His Word isn’t nice. Instead, because God’s Word isn’t nice but good, His Word of forgiveness in the blood of Jesus is for you and me when we regularly fail to keep His Word. 

The Word of the Lord endures forever and so His Word will always lift up the Messiah upon the cross in order that you may have hope in His Word. Therefore, on this Thanksgiving, when you ponder the object of your gratitude, know then in your heart that God’s Word is good. Don’t merely give thanks for the Word by giving a half-hearted thanks, but return again each day to the Word in order that you may rightly treasure it as that which gives you life far more abundantly than all of your daily bread.