Sermon 11-21-18 Sahuarita

Pastor Tim Patoka Thanksgiving Eve: November 21, 2018 Thank The Lord For All His Blessings Deuteronomy 8:10-18 1) A Blessed Life Leads To A Proud Heart 2) Remember The Lord By Counting His Blessings Thanksgiving has always been a special holiday for me. From early on I can remember our family going to great lengths to celebrate it with those who are close to us. Sometimes we would drive 12 hours one way just to spend it with family.

Sometimes we would spend all day looking for that one open grocery store to get that one ingredient to finish cooking the food. There was one time in college when my friend group had a mini-Thanksgiving of our own before we leaving for break.

We met in the dorm’s kitchen, scrounged up some food, and got together to pray.

We did impromptu prayer circle mentioning something we were all thankful for.

Being your typical guy, my answer was short and simple – something about the food. But many of my friends were more mature and mentioned significant things they were thankful for. It was then during that prayer circle that I gained insight in how wonderful it is to count your blessings. Because when you start listing all the different ways that the Lord has blessed you, it soon becomes apparent that there are a lot of things we are thankful for. That’s a lesson we’d be wise to take to heart on a regular basis, to thank the Lord for his blessings. For that’s what Moses strongly encouraged the Israelites to take to heart as they prepared the enter the Promised Land of Israel. And that’s we are encouraged to do as we prepare to celebrate this Thanksgiving weekend.

1) A Blessed Life Leads To A Proud Heart Deuteronomy is one of those books in the Old Testament that I’m guessing you’ve heard about but may not know it all that well. And that’s alright. With many of the books in the Old Testament, they can be difficult to follow if you don’t know the historical context in which they were written. So here’s a little backstory. The book of Deuteronomy was written by Moses at the end of his life, shortly before the Israelites would enter the Promised Land of Israel. Because of an earlier sin of anger (Numbers 20:1-13), Moses would not be the one to lead the Israelites in the Promised Land. Instead, God was going to take him up to heaven (Deuteronomy 34:1-8). But before Moses left for heaven, he had some last words for the Israelites which he recorded in this book of Deuteronomy. Throughout it all you’ll find Moses showing a fatherly heart for the Israelites as he reminds them of all that God has done for them and encourages them to remain true to God’s Word.

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Pastor Tim Patoka Thanksgiving Eve: November 21, 2018 It is with this in mind that Moses warns the Israelites to remember to thank the Lord for his past blessings and future blessings. As Moses wrote, “When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you. 11 Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day.

12 Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, 13 and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, 14 then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” (Deuteronomy 8:10-14) Moses was a wise man who knew what typically happens when people live with many blessings. They begin to focus on those blessings, are proud of what they have instead of who they have. It would not take too long for Israel to turn aside from Moses’ last words in the Promised Land. They prioritized their wants over God’s wants, their hearts became prouder of their blessings than of their God. Fast forward 800 years and you see how their proud hearts would lead them to entirely forget God and would lead to their captivity in Babylon.

But it’s not just Old Testament Israel who fight this temptation to be proud of their blessings and so forget God. That same temptation is alive today. In this coming Thanksgiving Weekend, what is it that you are thankful for? As you think of all the different ways, where does God fit on that list? While there is nothing wrong to find enjoyment or fulfillment in the blessings that God has given to us, there is a danger when our hearts become focused on what we have instead of who we have. Because when we lose sight of who we have, it’s not much further to forget God entirely.

If you’re going to have a proud heart this coming Thanksgiving Weekend, let it be proud in who you have, in your God who has blessed you in ways beyond counting. We certainly can and certainly will give thanks to God for all his material blessings. But greater than any material blessing that we have is the eternal blessing we have of our Savior. Because when you look at all the ways that God has blessed us, it is this one blessing alone which will bless us for all time. We know who our Savior is and what he has done for us. Jesus Christ who lived the perfect life we never could, who died the innocent death as a once-for-all sacrifice for our sins, and who rose from the dead to prove that he has power to bless both materially and eternally. And the eternal blessing we have from our God on high is

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Pastor Tim Patoka Thanksgiving Eve: November 21, 2018 that we are forgiven of all our sins. For the times our hearts have become proud in what we have. For the times we’ve forgotten to give thanks to God as we know we ought. For the times we’ve used his blessings for our own sinful uses. And it’s because of that eternal blessing of our forgiveness that we can have proud hearts in the correct sense, in who we have as our Savior.

2) Remember The Lord By Counting Your Blessings If you’re looking for a way to help you do just that, to give thanks to the Lord with a correctly proud heart, then perhaps you’ll find it helpful to count your blessings. That’s essentially what Moses does in the second half of our verses where he recounts all the ways that God has blessed his people during their 40 years in the wilderness. For it would be by counting their blessings that the Israelites would remind themselves to give thanks to God for his blessings instead of them taking credit for God’s blessings. Moses summarizes this all with these words, “You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’ 18 But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.” (Deuteronomy 8:17-18) Whether it was the blessings they had received for the past 40 years in the wilderness, or what they would later receive in the Promised Land of Israel, it’s God who ultimately gets the credit for all their blessings.

That’s not always easy to remember or want to do, especially when we are instrumental in the completion of that particular blessing. Consider again all the things for which you are thankful for. How many of them are due in part to you?

Perhaps you’re thankful for financial security which has come from you working hard and long days. Perhaps you’re thankful for friends and family, people whom you’ve taken intentional steps to stay in touch with. Perhaps you’re thankful for the favorable forecast these next few days, weather that you get to enjoy because you have decided to be in this part of the country. We would be hard-pressed to find a blessing that we didn’t have at least some part in the making.

I like to think of this concept about who you would thank for having a pie of pumpkin pie after a satisfying Thanksgiving feast. If you’re like me and you can barely make eggs and toast with breaking the yolks and burning the crust, you’ll probably take the easy way out to make a pumpkin pie. You’ll go to the freezer aisle, or to a restaurant renowned-for-their-pies, remove the packaging, and enjoy the pie. Perhaps you’ll get adventurous and buy a pie crust and the can of pumpkin 3

Pastor Tim Patoka Thanksgiving Eve: November 21, 2018 filling, open them up, and put them together. But if someone were to thank you for your pie-making abilities, you would promptly thank Betty Crocker or Village Inn. But say you wanted to make a pie from scratch. You put together the flour, sugar, butter, and other mystery ingredients to make a crust. You boil the pumpkin to get it all soft, mash up the flesh, pour it into the crust, and bake it in the oven. That takes time and talent!

But even in this from scratch method, you know who ultimately gets thanked? It’s God. For he was the one who made the pumpkin and wheat grow.

He’s the one who gave you the ability and skills to put all those ingredients together to make a pumpkin pie. So that, even though you were instrumental in making that pumpkin pie, it wouldn’t have happened if God were not involved. It’s God who’s ultimately gets the thanks. To say that we’re ultimately responsible for the pumpkin pie is to forgot what Moses has said, “You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’ 18 But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.” (Deuteronomy 8:17-18) So how can we make sure we don’t fall into that trap of thanking ourselves when we should be thanking God? Count the blessings that the Lord has given you.

Whether it be the weather, your financial security, your health, or dear ones to celebrate this weekend with, these are ways the Lord has blessed you, the ways he has shown his love for you. But don’t limit yourself to the blessings that are before your very eyes. But also count the blessing that is yours for all eternity, the blessing of your Savior and his complete forgiveness. Thank the Lord for what his Son did for you so that you can have true and lasting peace in this life and the one to come. Thank the Lord for all the ways you can count that he’s blessed you in this world. Because as you do so, you can be sure to avoid the error of Old Testament Israel of forgetting their God. Instead, you can be a living testament that the Lord is indeed worthy of many thanks this coming Thanksgiving weekend.

Amen.

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