Thanksgiving Eve
Here we are almost at another Thanksgiving Day. Yes, Thanksgiving Day is not a Church holiday; it is a state holiday. But it fits in nicely with our faith as Christians are all about thanking our gracious, holy Triune God. One of the great benefits of Thanksgiving Day—for both Christian and even non-Christian—is that it, if even for a moment, causes us to think about the blessings that we have and enjoy. It causes us to stop for a moment, no matter how brief, of reflection. And that’s a good thing. Our lives are so busy these days, so hectic, that so many do not take/ have the time for reflection and introspection. The devil really likes it that we don’t stop and think. He prefers that we do not think of the greater questions; he prefers that our lives be filled with distraction from these greater questions because these greater questions of life, death, heaven, hell, eternity, “why am I here?”, meaning, God, etc. is part of that natural curiosity God has put in us to lead us to Him.
But here we are with Thanksgiving Day fast upon us. And let us use this opportunity—provided by the government!—to reflect and in particular on the blessings we have and to give our holy, gracious Triune God thanks for them all! Thanksgiving goes quite well with, and, in fact, is part and parcel of our lives as Christians. It ultimately turns our gaze/ attention away from us and toward God, the Giver of all these blessings. Thanksgiving keeps us away from both distraction and indifference—things the devil uses to keep us from looking to the Lord.
As we look over this past year, what a year it has been! We see how greatly and in how many ways our lives this year have been affected by the covid pandemic. And obviously it wasn’t always for the better. We see all the devastation this brought to so many people in so many ways as it affected their health and livelihood; we think of the inconvenience and disruption and fear—a paralyzing fear with so many—it brought. And yet, this pandemic was not something that was out of God’s control. Yes, obviously the devil wanted to work great evil and destruction by it. But God is the One who is ultimately in control and He allowed it. He allowed it as our gracious God; He allowed it so that He could work a greater good for us. As we pause today for thanksgiving, let use this pandemic we endured to focus our thoughts.
We are probably no different than most other people—when we think of Thanksgiving Day our thoughts turn to the earthly/ physical goods and blessings we enjoy from our Lord’s hand. What we experienced this year in the pandemic hopefully will help us put into proper perspective these earthly gifts and blessings we have from the Lord. All these things that people usually are thankful for and give God thanks for are things that affect our earthly life—things like health and wealth, family, good friends, etc. In light of the pandemic, let us ponder and see all these things in a new light.
To help us do that, we look at a few verses from Job—the man who had it all—family, health, wealth but the Lord let the devil take it all away so he was left with nothing but suffering, a wife who told him to curse God and die, and friends who thought they were comforting him by trying to convince him he was guilty of some great/ hidden sin. Our text is Job’s words to his friends who told him that because he was suffering so, he must be a great sinner; the wicked suffer. Job’s response? The wicked prosper! Our text: [The wicked] say to God, ‘Depart from us. For we do not desire the knowledge of Your ways. Who is the Almighty, that we should serve Him? And what profit do we have if we pray to Him?’
In His love of us God gives us earthly blessings. Not only did God create us, He also preserves our lives giving us what we need for life—and often so much more. Hopefully the events of this past year helped remind us of that—as we feared a microscopic virus that could and did so much harm and bring such suffering. How quickly lives can be gone! Ultimately it is the Lord who preserves our life. So let us see all these earthly blessings we enjoy and especially give God thanks this Thanksgiving for Him preserving us, the ones He created. Jesus tells us: that God [Mt. 5.45]: makes His sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. Let us see our prosperity and abundance as God’s care of us all. Let it lead us to appreciation and gratitude. All the earthly blessings we enjoy are not only God’s gracious care and preserving us, but He also wants to use them to point us to Him, the Giver of all these good gifts! What we have and enjoy should turn us to God in appreciation and gratitude; they should instill in us the desire to seek out and love the One who gives them to us. And ultimately, these good things we receive from the Lord have the purpose not only to direct us to the Lord but also to direct us to the Lord in repentance as St. Paul writes [Rm 2.4]: the goodness of God leads you to repentance. This is where a day of Thanksgiving is helpful. It leads us to think on the question: what have I done to deserve all these gifts and blessings? If we are honest, we will have to admit that we are not worthy of them but God gives them to us in grace. How can we not then love Him in return and seek to do His will; seek out His greater gifts of forgiveness of sin and eternal life in Christ Jesus?
But what is so often the case? What so often does the blessing, the prosperity and abundance that God gives us, do? Instead of turning to God in appreciation and gratitude people often become proud and conceited. The fault isn’t God’s! He’s the One giving the blessing; the fault lies with us, with our sinful corrupt human nature. Let Thanksgiving Day be for us a call to repentance/ a call to recognize our sinfulness for what it is and to fight against pride, against claiming credit, against saying [Dt. 8.17]: “My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth.” Then Thanksgiving Day will have served a good and salutary purpose for us—it will have brought us to humility—a humility from which flows true thanksgiving to the God of all our blessings, the God who shows us grace and mercy, the God who is our Creator, Preserver and Savior.
In spite of their material prosperity, the wicked do not acknowledge God as the Giver of all things: [The wicked] say to God, ‘Depart from us. For we do not desire the knowledge of Your ways. Who is the Almighty, that we should serve Him? And what profit do we have if we pray to Him?’ There you see the importance of a true, Christian thanksgiving to the holy Triune God! Thanksgiving is not just a general feeling of thankfulness, rather it is a thanksgiving directed to the holy God Himself. And it is not just words but it is also works. Dear Christian, let us not just be content with the one day called Thanksgiving. Let that thanksgiving flow every day from our lives as we strive to do the Lord’s will, as we show our thankfulness by striving to live a life of faith and good works. Each time that we examine heart and life, recognize and confess that sin and receive our Lord’s forgiveness, how can there not be thanksgiving? Each time that we fight against sin, each time that we try to root sin out of our lives that is thanksgiving to the Lord who loves me, who created me, who saved me from sin and hell, who grants me every blessing—both spiritual and earthly. Love, gratitude and thanksgiving all belong together!
Here we must be on guard, dear Christian, because the devil is always working to destroy our faith in and love of God. And one way he does that is by the goods the Lord gives us, our prosperity and abundance. Either the devil, working with our old sinful nature, leads us to make idols out of our wealth and abundance and to put our trust and confidence in them; or he leads us to pride in thinking that all that we have, we earned or deserved. To be sure, we may do the work—and work very hard—but as we heard in the OT reading: And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth. Without His blessing our work, it would be all for nothing.
How wretched it is if the devil gets us to think that all our prosperity and abundance is not from the Lord’s hand. Because if our earthly blessings are all the result of our efforts—if God is out of the picture—what need is there for God? That’s exactly what the devil is trying to get us to think. [The wicked] say to God, ‘Depart from us. For we do not desire the knowledge of Your ways. Who is the Almighty, that we should serve Him? And what profit do we have if we pray to Him?’ That’s the good purpose our prosperity and abundance serve—not only does God provide for us through it, not only do we see and experience God’s grace and preservation but it also points us to Him who gave it to us. Think about it this way, too: If the devil gets us to think there is no need for God, don’t we then make ourselves or something else god? After all, then we don’t need/ want His ways, serve Him, pray to Him. What will then be our eternal fate? That’s why Thanksgiving is vital—it keeps directing us back to the Lord and His grace, mercy, gifts!
At the end of our text Job says about the wicked who outright reject God even though He has so richly blessed them: Indeed their prosperity is not in their hand. These earthly blessings that even the wicked enjoy are a gift from God. He is in control. God grants them—and He can take them away. The very fact that God blesses the wicked with great material blessing should not bother us. After all, remember God gives His blessings—here prosperity and abundance—to the wicked with the intention of pointing them to Him and to leading them to repentance. In fact, let us even take great comfort from the fact that God gives prosperity to the wicked, to those very ones who don’t just forget Him but who out right reject and oppose the Lord and His will and ways. It is this—God deals with all people in grace; that means He deals with us in grace. If God were “fair” He’d right now and then punish the wicked. But He shows them kindness, long-suffering, grants them all sorts of earthly blessings so that that they repent. If that is how He treats His enemies—in grace, giving them chance after chance to repent—how much more grace He shows His dear Christians, His dear children through faith and baptism! He doesn’t give us what we deserve. A life of thanksgiving keeps us from taking the Lord’s grace for granted. It will come to an end one day and that’s why we want to be ready and always in the true faith.
What is Job’s final word of our text? The counsel of the wicked is far from me. What are the wicked doing? What is their counsel? What are they planning? They are seeking earthly things while neglecting eternal glory. That’s why Job says that he doesn’t want their godless behavior to affect him; he keeps far away from it. Instead, when we see the earthly blessings we have and enjoy; when we see the prosperity and abundance with which God has still blessed us—even in this past year of all sorts of turmoil and uncertainty—we give our Lord thanks for them and as we do so, what happens? Our gaze/ attention is focused heavenward. We recognize that the Giver of all these earthly blessings is our almighty, gracious God who is the God of our salvation. Just as He gave us these things to preserve our earthly life, so too is He working mightily by His Holy Spirit in the Word and Sacrament to keep and preserve us in the faith and bring us to Him in heaven eternally. The earthly blessings are just but a small foretaste of the far greater blessings that will one day be ours. As we keep our attention focused on heaven, the Lord is richly blessing us now in this life. Happy Thanksgiving! INJ