Come, you thankful people, come!

Sermon for Thanksgiving

Deuteronomy 26:1-11  +  Acts 17:22-31

The hymn we just sang, “Come, Ye Thankful People, Come,” is in the section of the hymnal entitled “Harvest and Thanksgiving.” It makes reference to the harvest, for which the thankful people of God give thanks. But, really, the “harvest” is an allegory, a picture of the harvest of souls that God is even now gathering into His garner, His storehouse, His harvesthome, which is His holy Christian Church, here on earth now, and, one day, in the heavenly mansions at the final harvest. Come, you thankful people, come! Raise the song of harvesthome! Come and give thanks to God, who is both our Creator and our Redeemer, our Savior from hunger and our Savior from sin, our Deliverer in this life and in the next!

We need no national calendar to tell us when to give thanks to God; it’s our daily duty to give thanks, to make our whole lives a continual sacrifice of thanksgiving. But it’s all right for us to allow our country to influence the theme of our worship today. In fact, our country depends on us Christians for it, although they don’t know it. Without our prayers of thanksgiving at Thanksgiving, the entire day would be nothing but an abomination to God, a detestable offering sacrificed on an idol’s altar. Without believers in Christ standing in the breach, God would surely wipe out this nation as He once did with Sodom and Gomorrah, because it has become just as godless as those ruined cities were.

Just as godless, you might say, as ancient Athens was in the first century. You notice, when the Apostle Paul visited that city, he didn’t gather the people there on Mars Hill, on the Areopagus, to have a banquet with him or to encourage them to give thanks to God with him. He gathered them together to expose their idolatry, to teach them about the God to whom they owed their thanks, and to urge them to seek refuge in Christ before the great day of judgment comes.

Paul began his sermon by observing that the people of Athens were very religious—far more religious, to be honest, than the people of our country today. He had walked around the city and seen all their statues and monuments to their gods. He had even found an altar that was labeled, “To the unknown god.”

“To the unknown god.” That’s like all the prayers that people offer up thanking “our Creator, whoever he may be.” That’s a useless prayer. As Paul makes clear in his sermon, it isn’t enough to know that there’s a God out there to whom you owe thanks. You have to know who He is, what He has done, and how He wants to be worshiped. As Paul says, God made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth. He does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things.

Yes, this is the God who is to be worshiped, not nature itself, not a list of deities, and certainly not mankind or man’s science. It is the Creator God who is to be worshiped, the One who gives to all life, breath, and all things.

Still, after revealing God as the Giver of all things, Paul still doesn’t urge the Athenians, now, come, you thankful people, come! No, it isn’t enough to know God as the Giver. Paul just briefly touches on the history of the world, how God created all men from one blood, from one man and one woman, Adam and Eve. He wanted people to seek Him and to find Him. But Adam and Eve’s descendants went their own ways and created false gods for themselves. They became ignorant and godless as they formed nations and filled the earth. And so Paul warns them, now God commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.

Repent of your sins! Repent of your willful ignorance! Repent of your worship of anything and everything except for the true God—including yourself! Repent, because judgment is coming. And Jesus the Christ, crucified and risen again, will be the Judge.

Now at that point, most of the Greeks laughed at Paul and walked away, because, as he writes to the Corinthians, For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

But the Gospel of Christ has reached you here. You have heard the Word of God, declaring who He is, what He has done, and how He wants to be worshiped. He wants all people to confess their sins and repent. He wants all people to believe in His Son, who was put to death for our sins and raised again for our justification. You have heard. You’ve believed. And you’ve been baptized and brought into the New Covenant or Testament in the blood of Christ. The true God is not unknown to you.

And so you are not like the Athenians, nor are you like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, nor are you like most of your American neighbors. You are like Old Testament Israel as they were about to be brought into the Promised Land. God had already redeemed them, had brought them into His covenant, had provided for them along the way, and was about to bring them into that Promised Land, a land flowing with milk and honey. And so Israel, under the first covenant, was invited to come and give thanks to God after they were brought safely into the Promised Land. Moses called on them to recognize all the good that God had done for them, not just the daily providence that He gives to all, but especially as recipients of God’s covenant faithfulness, as we heard in the first lesson this evening.

The Lord has brought you to the brink of the Promised Land, to the borders of heaven. We’re just waiting for Christ to come and take us in. And even here in the wilderness, what has the Lord provided—in addition to life and breath?

He has given you His Word, from Genesis to Revelation, and He’s given you opportunities to read it, to hear it, to study it. He’s given you time, time to receive His Word, and a place to receive the ministry of it. He’s given us one another, and other fellow Christians (near and far) to help bear one another’s burdens here and to encourage one another as we see the Day approaching. He’s given you all kinds of spiritual gifts, so that you can serve Him in this life, and be lights in the world, and point others to God.

He’s given you family and friends and food in abundance, along with scarcity of these things at times, to remind you to attach yourself to Him above all things. He’s given you homes, and health, along with the ailments that make you long for a home beyond this life. He’s given you plenty of beautiful sunsets and beautiful weather, along with the storms and the extreme weather that reminds us that this universe is growing old like a garment and will soon be destroyed. He’s given you daily bread and all that that entails. And He’s promised to give it to you again tomorrow.

So, come, you thankful people, come! Raise the song of Harvesthome. Give thanks to our God for harvesting you from among the nations to be His own special people, and then give thanks for all His providence along the way to the Promised Land. And finally, give thanks for hope, for the sure hope of the harvest at the end of the age, the hope of inheriting that Promised Land that awaits the people of God, where the thanksgiving will be endless. Amen.