Introduction

We're going to be thinking about Thanksgiving Day today. You may be thinking to yourselves, Why? Because Thanksgiving Day is important. It's not a one day out of the year thing, it should be every day when we understand the goodness of God. When we really realize all he's done for us and that he wants to be in us, we should become thankful. And there's this wonderful story found in Luke 17. Notice how the story unfolds.

(Read Luke 17:11-17)

Jesus looks at this man who came back and he celebrates with him, but he asks the man a question: Where is the other nine? Here is my challenge to you this Thanksgiving season, and here is my challenge to you for the rest of your life: Be the one. Be the one among the ten who actually looks. I mean, all of them as they are walking along, they've been out of society, their skin is leprous, and as they're walking it changes, it's transformed, they're healed. And one goes back to the origin, to the source of the healing, and says thank you. The other nine went all kinds of places. Who knows? To show their family, to celebrate, to go to the temple to worship, to do things they couldn't do before. But they went that direction and one went back to Jesus and thanked him. Are you going to live as the one, who as you walk through life actually stops and notices the goodness of God, the grace of God, the presence of God, and says thank you, God, I notice and I'm thankful.

God's love endures forever

Well, to think about this idea of thankfulness, to give us sort of a framework to remind us of some of the things that we should actually stop and be the one who is thankful, we're going to look at Psalm 136. This is one of those Psalms that has a repetitive line. One of the lines that's repeated again and again after the end of each verse is this line: "His love endures forever." So the first thing we're going to think about in this call to thankfulness is recognizing the fact that God's love endures forever. Psalm 136:1 says, "Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good. His love endures forever." And it does, his love endures forever.

I want to ask you a question this morning, how might the idea of being lavished with infinite love for eternity affect your outlook for the day? What if you lived every day profoundly, deeply, and in a convinced sort of way in your heart, believing that the God of the universe loves you eternally and infinitely? Might that change your outlook on the day? We live in a culture that is all about being loved. People will look in the craziest, most unhealthy, irresponsible places for love. But the God of the universe says, "I will love you infinitely beyond your wildest imagination and I will love you eternally forever."

You don't have to look very far into our culture to see the driving power of people who want to be loved. You could look on a junior high or high school campus and see young men and women who will do almost anything to be in a group. They will take everything their parents taught them, everything they've always said that they believed in, everything they always said they would do or never do and they'll drop almost everything they have ever thought that they would do or not do because someone says I love you. It's a deep, profound need. But if we live with a deep sense of God's love, a satisfying, fulfilling eternal, lavish sense of his love, then we don't have to run after all the counterfeits when we found the real thing.

It doesn't end in junior high or high school, it goes on to college and to young adult life. You watch young men and women who so desperately want to have someone say I love you, that when someone comes along and says, I love you, they'll do about anything. Even if they're pretty sure the person doesn't mean it, what they mean is, I love you tonight. You see that deep, deep need. What if as young adults we understood and believed that God loves and that love was so important and so real and so profound and we are so aware of the depth of that love and the eternality of that love that we didn't have to go after the counterfeits because we have the real thing.

It doesn't stop when you get out of your 20s. It can go into your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. We desire, we need to be loved. And here God says to us, "Understand, my love for you endures forever." Come to know God, come through faith in Jesus and experience something. I am loved beyond description and beyond time. Loved by the Maker of the heavens and the earth. When you get that, then you can have healthy, loving relationships with other people. That's why Jesus said the most important thing in all the universe is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and then love your neighbor as yourself. Let God's love get ahold of you, get ahold of God's love, and it will change you. "Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, his love endures forever." He is a good God, and that's worth celebrating and praising God for.

Here is my question for you: How has God revealed his goodness in your life? How have you experienced the goodness of the God of heaven? And you know what, he has been so good to us in so many ways. We can walk right past those ways, we can forget those ways, we can get used to them and numb to the fact that he has been so good, and along we walk. But there are times we just need to stop and say, God is good. In the midst of all the financial chaos, in the midst of struggles in the political realm, in the midst of conflict in the Middle East, but you know what, God is still good. He is still present, there are still parents who want to point their kids towards Jesus. There is still a congregation that makes a space to love them and to embrace them, and to help them along.

Where have you seen the goodness of God? Where have you seen his presence? For another day of life, another breath to take, you can say God is good. For friendships, people who care about us, you can say, God is good. For a church family that loves God and loves you, you can say, God is good. For a large, delicious chili verde burrito, you can say, God is good. The little things and the big things like the burrito. Do you notice, do you actually stop and say, God, you're good. If you pick up your child for the hundredth time or for the thousandth time do they seem like a burden or a load, or do you look at their face and you say, God is good, what a gift. It's how we see it, it's how we look at it. He is good.

God is over all

Then we discover in Psalm 136 2-4 that he is a God who is over all, he is sovereign, he is powerful, and he is a God of wonders. So he is God of gods, capital G—God, Lord of Lords.

(Read Psalm 136:2-4)

God is glorious. He is the capital G, God, over small g, gods. He is the only God, the only One, and he loves us, he cares about us, and he reaches out to us. So here is my question: Have you seen his wonders? Have you seen the amazing wonders of God in your own life day-to-day, in the world around you, in the lives of others? Do you notice his wonders and do you say thank you?

I have this feeling that seeing the wonders of God and thankfulness are inextricably bound together. When we're thankful for the wonderful things God has done, we notice them more. Some of you say, "Well, I don't really see God do wonderful things." Slow down, be the one among ten and notice. Nine of them had their skin healed and they kept on going. Just as wonderful of an experience, but they didn't stop and thank God. I think there's a connection, not only the more that we thank God the more we experience his wonders, but I even suspect that the more we're thankful to God, the more wonders he does in our life. I really believe that God because he is a good Father that if we're not thankful there are times he won't keep doing great things and wonders because we're not thankful and he doesn't want us to grow up to be spoiled little punks. (That's a paraphrase.) But God is a good Father, he disciplines those he loves, and if we never say thank you, I wonder if there are times when he might say, "They are not ready for another one of my wonders."

This is a story I have never shared in all my teaching and preaching, it hit me this week as I was preparing. It's a story that goes back to my childhood when we would go to Christmas up at my grandmother's house. My grandmother would give us a gift and then we would always get a gift from Aunt Elaine and Uncle Vernon. I'd never met them. They lived back in Flint, Michigan, and we were in Orange County. But we would get a little gift and then a check for fifteen dollars, and back then fifteen dollars was like a million dollars. So they were very generous. And every year I would get this check and this little gift from Aunt Elaine and Uncle Vernon, and my mom would say this, "You kids should write Aunt Elaine and Uncle Vernon a thank you note. And every year I got a gift and every year my sisters Gretchen and Alison wrote a note, and I didn't write a note." So one year—I was like 8, 9, or 10—we get to Grandma's house, she gives us our little gift, we open it, and she gives a gift to Alison from Aunt Elaine and Uncle Vernon, and a gift to Gretchen from Aunt Elaine and Uncle Vernon, and she was done giving gifts and there was no gift for little Kevin Garth Harney. And I looked and I said, "Don't I get a gift?" And my mom said, "Aunt Elaine and Uncle Vernon let us know that you've never written them a thank you note, they will not be sending you Christmas gifts anymore." And I praise God for that. I'll never forget that. I'm really good at writing notes now. And it's not just so I get another gift. But seriously, I thank God for that. I never thanked, I never acknowledged. They probably thought, "He just doesn't appreciate it, he just doesn't care," and they stopped giving the gift.

If we notice and thank God for his great things he does, I think first of all we will notice more of those things. But also I think in some ways if we stop giving thanks to God, I think there is a point at which God says, "You know, you're not ready for another wonder because you really haven't appreciated what you've already received." I think a loving God would actually refrain from giving us blessings because he doesn't want us to become spoiled little kids. And thankfulness, I think, unleashes a sense of God's wonder. So I want to encourage you to be thankful to God for all he does. We should thank him because he is the Creator of all things.

In Psalm 136 verses 5-9, there are these five lines. Each of the five lines finishes with "His love endures forever."

(Read Psalm 136:5-9)

When you drink in the glory of God's creation, thanks should flow naturally. When you see the beauty of what God has made, when you watch the sun rise over the hills in the Salinas Valley and give light to that beautiful long valley there, just say, "God, you're good, look what you made." When you watch the sun set over the ocean in Monterey, notice and thank God. Sometimes because we're in such an amazingly beautiful place, we miss it, we don't even notice anymore the beauty of what God has made. The deer around here are so slow you can just look at them standing on the side of the road. Most places in the world they run away because people shoot them. Not here. They'll walk up and nibble on your ear, they're tame.

We live here, we notice the beauty, don't we? Every day, hopefully. But you know what sometimes happens? You go zipping right by it. So slow down, say, "God, for all you have made, I give you thanks. You show your love, your enduring love through those things."

(Read Psalm 136:10-15, 136:24)

God's deliverance

This is a declaration that you have to chew on a little bit because some of things in here are challenging. This is talking about the greatest moment of deliverance in the history of God's people in the Old Testament, the Exodus. They were slaves in Egypt for 400 years, they were oppressed, they were being abused and they wanted to be set free, and this declares that freedom.

The people of Israel looked back to this moment over and over because it was this definitive moment when they were set free. This was the time in history when the Passover Lamb was slaughtered and the blood was put on the doorposts so the judgment would pass over their homes and not come upon them. It was a picture pointing ahead to Jesus Christ, to the Cross, to his death on the Cross for all of our wrongs, for all of our sins, for our thoughts, our words, our actions that were against God. Jesus died on the Cross, his blood was shed so that when we put our faith in him, that blood is placed on the doorposts of our hearts and our lives and all judgment passes over us. And like Israel looked back to that moment when they were delivered from Egypt, we should look back to the moment we put our faith in Jesus if we have. And if we haven't yet, to understand that he opens his nail pierced hands and says, "I welcome you home if you'll come to me, if you'll turn from your sins."

Do you look back to that moment if you're a follower of Jesus, whether you were five years old or 75 years old, and say, "I remember the One who delivered me, his love endures forever and I am thankful." No matter what the market is doing, no matter how the economy goes up and down, no matter where we are relationally in our lives, I know this: There was a moment when I was lost and I became found by Jesus, I put my faith in him, he delivered me from sin, death, hell, judgment, and the power of Satan, and he set me free, and on any given day I can be thankful for that. I know that's true and I hold that in my heart and it guides my life.

On any day, if you know Jesus, you can be thankful for the deliverance he has brought to you through his death on the Cross. If you've never cried out to Jesus, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, he stands with his arms open and says, "You are welcome to come to me, just confess your sins, put your trust in me, and follow me and I'll give you a new life." It happened to me when I was 16 years old and my life has never been the same. He stands waiting. And if you know him, celebrate it, thank him for his deliverance, for his salvation.

(Read Psalm 136:16 and 136:23)

God leads us through the desert times

Here's the question: How have you experienced his presence in the desert and his hand leading you toward refreshment and hope? We all walk through tough times, it can be a relational desert, a financial desert, an emotional desert, or a spiritual desert. All kinds of things that make you feel dry and arid and wonder, "Am I ever going to get through here." In the 40 years that the people of Israel wandered in the desert, they spun like a top in the desert, and those 40 years God never left them. He did some of his greatest wonders and miracles while they were in the desert. You know what they mostly did? Complained. He provides food every day and they say, "But we're tired of this food." He protects and provides and they missed it. They became like the nine that didn't notice and didn't thank, not like the one who came back and said, "Thank you, Lord."

What's your desert right now? Here's what God wants you to know: He's with you right there, he's never left you alone. If you're not in one right now, I can tell you something for sure, you were in one a while back or you'll be in one sometime in the future. Life has deserts, it's part of the journey we walk. But to know that he is with us and that he leads us through them, what thanks that brings. Maybe all you can do right now is through parched lips in the middle of the desert say, "But God, I thank you that I'm not alone, I know in the desert you are still with me and I hold on to that." And if he has delivered you from desert times, thank him for that.

(Read Psalm 136:21-22)

God gives us a place

God gave them a place, a place to belong. We should look at the place that God has given to us on many levels, where you live. Well, it's not as big an apartment as I wanted. Well, I'm here and I'd rather be there. Well, I'm on a military base but I don't have the connections I want. Well, the house isn't quite the way I want it. We can all find something we don't like about where we are, but you have a place, thank God for that. Even if you're saying, God, I thank you for the shelter I'm staying in right now because other people have helped to provide a place, God, thank you for that place. Where you are, notice it and say, God, you provided a place for me.

There is a spiritual place called the church. The church is God's people, but God has given us a place to gather together, a place to be his people in community, to stand alongside these families and say, "We will pray for your kids and we'll be a part of that 200 or more volunteers who help with children's ministry to help point those kids towards Jesus. We will be your friends, we will walk alongside of you, we will be a community of faith." God has given us a church to be a part of which is a blessing. God has given us a place here at Shoreline we want to use the best we can for his glory.

(Read Psalm 136:5)

God provides

We see that God provides. The question is, how is God providing? I can tell you this: Nobody is sitting here today without having had breakfast because there is bagels, donuts, oatmeal, fresh fruit available here. Every meal you have, would you stop and become that one who says, "God, thank you for this meal. It may not be exactly what I want, it may not be all that I want, but God, you provide daily bread, thank you, Lord, bless you."

(Read Psalm 136:26)

God is worthy of thanks

The last verse declares that he is worthy of thanksgiving every day of our lives. This is my challenge to you: Be the one. Ten lepers were walking down that road and right in front of their eyes the leprosy fell off their bodies and they were healed. Nine kept on walking and one came back to Jesus. Will you be the one who says, I want to return to Jesus, I want to thank him.

Kevin Harney is the Lead Pastor of Shoreline Community Church in Monterey, CA. He is the author of Reckless Faith and Organic Outreach for Families.