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"For faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." ~ Romans 10:17

Thanksgiving 2019: All that is within me, bless His holy name

12/3/2019

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Source: https://freevintageillustrations.com/free-vintage-thanksgiving-illustrations-for-all-your-festive-projects/
1 Timothy 2:1-4 
Pastor James Preus 
Trinity Lutheran Church 
November 27, 2019 
 
Happy Thanksgiving! To whom are we giving thanks on this national day of thanksgiving? To the Lord God of course, the creator of the heavens and the earth. And for what are we giving thanks? Not only for the turkey dinner that many of us will be enjoying tomorrow, or for safe travel, or for good health. We give thanks for much, much more. The first article of the Apostles’ Creed and explanation from our Small Catechism put it well.  
I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.  
What does this mean? 
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. He defends me against all danger and guards and protects me from all evil. All this He does only out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me. For all this it is my duty to thank praise, serve and obey Him. This is most certainly true.”  
Indeed, it is our duty to thank, praise, serve, and obey him! That is a lot that our God has provided for us. Not only has he created us and given us the earth and this nation, our body and soul, and all that we need and enjoy in this life, but he continues to preserve them! How blessed we are to have two eyes that see, ears that hear, clothes to keep us warm, food in abundance, a place to sleep. I acknowledge that my wife and children are a gift from God. I do not deserve them and God did not need to give them to me. Yet, see how good God is!  
God has blessed us with medical advances few could imagine in generations past. Open-heart surgery, knee replacements, cancer-treatment, pills that correct defects in the body that killed many in the past. How many miracles do we experience every year and how often do they pass us by without us giving due thanks and appreciation to God? 
You might not like all who are in authority in Iowa and in the United States government, yet, no one is stopping us from giving thanks to the Triune God tonight. We’re not starving. Even in a bad year for agriculture, we still have food on our table. We have protection and a certain level of justice from our government. So, yes, for our government we should give thanks to God. And we should pray for our leaders! They need God’s guidance and protection! And it is to our benefit when God does guide them to do his will.  
This past summer my family and I went to Washington D.C. for our vacation. We got to meet our Senator Chuck Grassley. When I told him that I was a pastor he immediately mentioned our text for today, 1 Timothy 2:1-2, and he asked for the prayers of our congregation. I told him we prayed for our leaders every week. It is encouraging that some of our leaders do fear God and desire our prayers. Yet, even if our leaders are hypocrites, or even public unbelievers, they need our prayers. We should pray that God protect them, guide them to do his will, and we should thank God when he uses them for good. God is able to do good even through wicked rulers, as he has proven in Holy Scripture time and again.  
Although, Thanksgiving is a national holiday, we Christians understand its true meaning. We give thanks to the Triune God, the maker of the heavens and the earth, for all that he has given to us apart from our own merits. And we pray that God would continue to provide for us according to his divine, fatherly goodness.  
Yet, giving thanks entails more than saying a prayer and singing a few hymns, although these certainly please our Father in heaven. All too often, we give thanks to God for giving us our body, and soul, eyes, ears, and all our members, yet we go on to use them for evil. We use the eyes God gives us to covet and to lust; the ears he gives us to listen to slander and lies. We use our mind and senses that God gives us not to learn his word and grow in knowledge of the truth, but in foolish endeavors and laziness. We use the money he provides us with for selfish purposes; we behave as if our land and property are ours purely on account of our own efforts and for the purpose of our own pleasure. We waste time, neglect our family, curse our government or try to use it for unjust purposes. In short, while giving thanks to God with our mouths for all he has given to us, we then use what God has given us for ungodly purposes.  
The Psalmist proclaims in Psalm 103, “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!” We give thanks to the Lord not only with our mouths, but with our eyes, ears, arms, legs, clothing, shoes, house, wife, children, mind, with our civic activity, and everything that we have and do. We give thanks to the Lord when we use the ears he has given us to listen to his Holy Word in order to grow in faith; and when we listen to the plight of our neighbor and give him our compassion. We thank the Lord when we do honest work with our arms, legs, and bodies so that we can provide for those in need. We give thanks to the Lord when we defend others and speak well of them; when we work to clothe and feed those in need. We give thanks to the Lord when we bring our wife and children to church, say prayers with them at home, and confess Christ to them. We give thanks to the Lord when we not only pray for our leaders, acknowledging that God works through them to do good, but also when we speak out for what is right, defending the helpless, and declaring what is just and true according to God’s word.  
We give thanks to God for all that he has given us by using what he has given us to the glory of his name. By using what God has given us, to do good to others, we give glory to God on earth. This is pleasing to God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.  
The greatest way we give thanks to God, is by receiving his greatest gift through faith. Through faith in Jesus Christ, who died for our sins, we receive forgiveness of sins and eternal life. God, who has fed our bodies, and clothed our bodies, and given our bodies a place to sleep, shelter, protection, medical care, and so forth, has also provided for our bodies to live forever. He sent Jesus Christ to die to take away our sins. In Christ’s resurrection we see our own resurrection and eternal life. In receiving the Sacrament of Christ’s true body and blood, we recognize that God intends for our bodies to live forever. We see that all that God has richly given us here on earth is a very small thing compared to the glories that he will reveal to us.  
The greatest way you can give thanks to God is to recognize him as your Savior. We don’t give thanks to him with our bodies as we ought. We don’t use all that he has given us in this life to his glory. Our thanksgiving is not good enough. Yet, through faith in Christ Jesus our bodies receive a healing that no medicine can give. We are clothed with a garment that does not wear out like all the clothes we wear on this earth. Through faith in Jesus we eat a food that does not perish, but gives eternal life. And when we finally do inherit eternal life, then we will commence to gives thanks and praise to God with our words and actions for the rest of eternity. And so, when we trust in Christ, we are confessing that we intend not only to give thanks to our God today, but we intend to give thanks to God every day, without end, with all our body and soul, with our eyes, ears, and all our senses, with all that we have and own. In Christ Jesus we intend to bless the Lord with all that is within us for all eternity. And in Christ Jesus, we will. Amen.  
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November 25th, 2017

11/25/2017

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Luke 17:11-19 
Trinity Lutheran Church 
Pastor James Preus 
November 22, 2017 
 
Last week President Trump not so subtly asked for a thank you from three college basketball players whom he helped release from custody in China, where they were arrested for alleged shoplifting. Now you may have opinions about our president and his use of Twitter, but our septuagenarian chief of state displayed a sentiment felt by many, especially those of the older generation. "The youth these days aren't grateful! They don't know how good they have it. They don't know how to say, thank you!"  
And it's true, mostly! Young people are in general unappreciative. But it's not just the young. Everyone has a problem with realizing the blessings they have. Counting your blessings is a good exercise, especially in this season of thanksgiving. And we certainly have a lot to give thanks for. We're dressed in fine clothing, we eat sumptuously every day, we live in warm, dry, and clean homes. We have beating hearts and our members and senses function.   
Yet to give thanks you need more than simply to count your blessings. Even an atheist can recognize his fortune in having good health and wealth. To be thankful you also need to know from whom your blessings come. When you recognize both the blessings you receive and you know who gives you these blessings, that is faith. Giving thanks is a beautiful fruit of faith. So, the thankful leper in our lesson teaches us a whole lot about saving faith.  
All ten lepers cry out to Jesus asking for help. This doesn't necessarily mean that they all had faith in Jesus. Leprosy is a terrible disease. These men were in excruciating pain, not to mention they were ostracized from their families and communities. They had heard that Jesus could heal them, so they ask him for help. Suffering makes people desperate. There is a whole industry of so-called natural medicine, much of which does not work at all, but desperate people suffering from various ailments buy them, because they don't know what else to do.  
Yet after Jesus heals them, only one of the ten returns to give thanks. Having faith isn't a prerequisite for being healed. God lets his rain fall on the just and the unjust and shines his sun on the wicked and the righteous alike. He feeds the unbelievers just as he does the Christians and medicine works on both those who pray and those who don't. And when someone recovers from an illness it doesn't mean that he had a stronger faith than the one, who didn't recover.  
Yet Jesus says to the one thankful leper, "Your faith has made you well." Well, actually Jesus said, "Your faith has saved you." The Greek word for "save" can mean to save eternally. It can also mean to help or make someone healthy. Considering the context, that the man was just healed from leprosy, most translators think "made you well" is the most fitting translation. Yet, all ten of the lepers were made well from their leprosy. Did they all have faith? We know only of the faith of this one leper, because he gave thanks. 
When Jesus heard the request of the lepers he told them to go to show themselves to the priests and on the way, they realized they were healed. Jesus didn't send the lepers to the priests to be healed of their leprosy. Jesus already healed their leprosy. He sent them to the priests, because God had established a rite to cleanse a leper after he had been healed of his leprosy. This cleansing is spiritual. The healing is physical.   
Leviticus chapter fourteen explains what the priest must do for a man, who has been healed of leprosy, so that he may be clean. It involves sacrificing a pigeon and dripping blood on the leper as well as sacrificing lambs to atone for sin. Jesus tells the lepers to go to the priests in the temple. The priests would then make sacrifices for them to make them spiritually clean.  
And it's not that there is something special in the blood of doves or lambs that makes lepers clean. Rather, the sacrifices are done according to the God's command and because God promises to be present in his temple. The healed lepers were going to the temple to be in God's presence and receive spiritual healing. Yet the one leper, when he saw that he was healed returned to Jesus. He gave thanks and glorified God at Jesus feet. The word used here for "give thanks" is only used in the New Testament to give thanks to God. And here the man gives thanks to God at the feet of Jesus. The man recognizes, who Jesus is. He recognizes God in Jesus. He sees in Jesus that he can get not only physical healing, but spiritual cleansing.  
And this is why Jesus says, "Your faith has saved you." The man has faith in Jesus. He worships him as his God. He gives thanks to him as the provider of all good things. Yet, even more, the man sees Jesus as the source of spiritual cleansing. The dove and lambs that would be sacrificed in the temple in Jerusalem were only a shadow pointing to Christ, who even then was journeying to Jerusalem, where he would be the final sacrifice for atonement, which would cleanse the whole world.  
Giving thanks is not what saves you. Faith in Jesus Christ alone saves. Yet thanksgiving makes known that faith is living just as large juicy shiny apples make clear that the roots under the ground are strong and healthy. And so, when you give thanks to God you make known your faith. You acknowledge that you receive all good things from God alone. As our hymn of the day proclaims,  
Now thank we all our God With hearts and hands and voices,  
Who wondrous things has done, In whom His world rejoices;  
Who from our mothers' arms Has blessed us on our way 
With countess gifts of love and still is ours today. (LSB 895) 
With such proclamation of thanksgiving, we also express full confidence that God will continue to bless us throughout our lives and that we may ask him for all we need.  
Holy Communion or the Lord's Supper has historically been referred to as the Eucharist. Eucharist comes from the Greek word for giving thanks. "Our Lord on the night when he was betrayed took bread and after giving thanks he broke it and gave it to them saying..." Jesus gave thanks to his Father for the Sacrament he was giving to his disciples. And we give thanks to God every time we receive this Sacrament. "It is truly meet, right, and salutary that we should at all times and in all places give thanks to You, holy Lord, almighty Father, everlasting God, through Jesus Christ, our Lord..." we pray before the Words of Institution every Sunday. "O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, and His mercy endureth forever... We give thanks to you almighty God, that You have refreshed us through this salutary gift, and we implore You that of Your mercy You would strengthen us through the same in faith toward You and in fervent love toward one another; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord..." We pray this prayer of thanksgiving after we receive the Sacrament.  
We give thanks, because we, like the thankful leper, recognize where our true healing comes from. In our prayer of thanksgiving we confess the benefit we receive from Christ's body and blood, strengthening in faith toward God and in fervent love toward one another. These prayers of thanksgiving express our faith that the Jesus, who gave himself up to die on the cross for the atonement of our sins gives himself to us in this Sacrament with all the benefits of his dying and rising.  
Thanksgiving, like faith, can be misplaced. Most people will say they have faith. Whether their faith is in the promises of the forgiveness of sins and eternal salvation won through the atoning suffering and death of Jesus Christ and given through the preaching of the Gospel and administration of the Sacraments is another story. Likewise, nearly everyone in America is celebrating Thanksgiving this long weekend. But for what are they thankful for? And to whom are they giving thanks? We are thankful for all good things, which God showers upon us in our lives, which we can list off from the explanations to the First Article of the Creed and the Fourth Petition, "Give us this day our daily bread" from our Small Catechism. But above all, we give thanks for Jesus, his death for our sins and resurrection, which gives us eternal life and for his coming to us now in the midst of this life. And we give thanks to the only God, who can save; the one who sent his Son to save us. Such thanksgiving is not misplaced, because such faith is not misplaced. Amen.  ​
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    Rev. James Preus

    Rev. Preus is the pastor of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Ottumwa, IA. These are audio and text of the sermons he preaches at Trinity according to the Historical Lectionary. 

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