Grace Mercy and Peace to you from God our Father through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Our text today is the Old Testament lesson with special emphasis on Verse 10 "When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you." Thus our text.
Brothers and Sisters in Christ. Today's text says, "When you have eaten and are satisfied, then praise the Lord your God." These words ring especially true today, as we are preparing Thanksgiving feasts. I am sure that many of you already have Turkey's in the oven, and pies freshly baked. After we are done here at church, most of us will be going somewhere to eat to our hearts content, and our stomach's discontent! We will fill our plates full of turkey, green beans, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy and all sort of other food, and then we eat. If you are like me, you fill your plate 3 or 4 times, and eat until you think you will burst. Only then, when all of the food has been tasted, and the pie and been enjoyed, do you look over to the cook and say "That was delicious! It was the most wonderful thanksgiving meal I have had ever! Thank you for providing it for us."
That is the way it works isn't? It is only after you have tasted the goodness of something that you can really truly thank the one who provided it for you. The same thing is true with God. He provides us with tremendously wonderful gifts, and only when we have received them can we truly thank Him for His grace. Only when we receive his gifts, can we understand the cost and be truly thankful.
But sometimes we aren't satisfied with the gifts from God. Sometimes it seems like there is nothing that he truly provides for us. We forget how much God cares for us and richly and daily takes care of us. We lose trust in His promises, and instead look towards our selves. And when we forget the gifts that God gives us, we forget to give him thanks and praise for those gifts. So my question for you today is this, "How can we remain thankful for the gifts that God gives us?"
This is not an easy thing for us to do. As I have mentioned, we are sinful, even from our mother's wombs. There is not an ounce of "goodness" with in us. This sinful part of us does not want to believe that God really takes care of us and provides for us. Instead we sinners like to think we take care of ourselves. We like to think that we are the supplier of all good things in our lives. After all, we go to work everyday, just so that we can provide food and shelter for ourselves. Thus when thanksgiving comes around, we like to think that we are the ones who are providing. The feast is because of me, not because of God's gifts.
And though we think sinfully believe this, Scripture does not teach this. In fact it teaches the opposite. In Paul's letter to Titus, the 6th Chapter, we learn that God richly provides everything for our enjoyment. That means that the Thanksgiving feast we will partake in later today, is provided by God. That means that the shelter over our heads is provided by God. In fact, the Small Catechism says that "I believe that God 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."
But our sinful nature doesn't believe this, and as a result, we don't give God the credit He deserves. Instead, that evil in our hearts wells up, and we think only of ourselves. We don't thank god for all of our daily blessings. We ignore him, and do whatever we want. We don't like to be under obligation to anyone, especially God, for any free gift. So we either despise the giver of the gift, or we work to pay them back, both of which defeat the idea of free gifts.
Or maybe we spend our lives looking for God to tell us thank you. Many of us are guilty of this. We look at our lives and falsely believe that we are doing pretty well on our own. We tell ourselves that God should be rewarding us for how many great things we have done. We go to church every week, and we expect God to reward us for that. Wives pick up after your husbands, (or at least mine does!) Shouldn't these things earn rewards for us with God? Shouldn't these things make him look at us and say, "Well done good and faithful servant?"
No, In Isaiah 63, we read that all our righteous works are but filthy rags in God's eyes. Our sin is too great to overpower them. We don't deserve rewards or thanksgiving from God, but instead we only deserve punishment. Immediately following today's text, Deuteronomy goes on to warn us not to forget the Lord after we have eaten and been satisfied. Those of us who forget the Lord, or trust in ourselves, or who look for thanks from God, will surely be destroyed, as Deuteronomy 8:19-20 say.
In our sin, destruction is what we deserve. We do not deserve thanks from God, we deserve death. Scripture tells us that the wages of sin are death. And furthermore, St. John tells us that if we deny our sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. We deserve death, and we need to be honest with ourselves about it. We are lost and alone.
What do we have to give thanks for if all we have to look forward to is death? Nothing. Jesus compares us to white washed tombs, on the outside we look nice, we do great things, but on the inside we are full of dead bodies. We are the living dead.
But death is not the end for us. We have a reason to be thankful. In our sin, God has sent us a savior, who has redeemed us from all our wrongdoings. God sent his very own son, God in human flesh, to die upon a cross for our sins. Jesus actively obeyed all that the Laws of God demanded, so where we failed, he succeeded. Jesus also passively was beaten bloody, crucified, and died to take away all of our sin. In this single act, we have all blessings of heaven, and we have the promise of a life to come.
This life to come can be seen in today's text. In it, the Lord is reminding the people of Israel what to expect when they come into the promised land, the land of Israel. The text says "For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land-- a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills; a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills. " This land has everything they need to survive. They will be able to grow prosperous and be protected from harm and danger. That is the promise of God.
God tells them that after they have experienced this glorious land and all that it has to offer, then they will be satisfied, and praise the Lord. God gives all of these things and then they praise the Lord. That is the way things work, God gives and because of his gifts, we respond. These gifts do not originate with man or man's work, but instead completely from the grace of God. God's gifts are unearned, they are free, they are free of charge. God gives, because he loves you. The love of God shines forth from the body of Christ on the cross.
You too have the promise of life in a wonderful land, only your promise is not an earthly promise. Your promise is for a heavenly land, where According to the Gospel of John, Christ has prepared many rooms for you. This heavenly promised land will be a place of eternal peace. Hebrews chapter 11 tells us that it is a better country. Through this heavenly promised land, a river of living water flows, the same water that we are baptized into. It is the water of life. In that water we died with Christ and were resurrected with him into life eternal. God gives this gift to us freely through the death and resurrection of his Son. Because of Christ, we now have this gift given to us, and this gift will satisfy all the hungers and desires that we have ever had.
Now that we have been given this gift, and now that we are satisfied in the promised heavenly bliss, we can praise god freely and completely. We no longer need worry about our selfish ambitions getting in the way, because God has forgiven them all. We no longer need to worry about earning Thanks from God, because Christ himself earned all that was necessary. Now we are free to worship God with no strings attached.
Today we will eat with our families, and more than likely will be very satisfied, but this satisfaction cannot compare with the satisfaction we have in Christ. That satisfaction surpasses all human understanding. So now, just as after eating we praise the cook of the Thanksgiving feast, today we can praise the architect of our faith, Jesus Christ. We can sing the hymn, "Now thank we all our God, with hearts and hands and voices, who wondrous things hath done, in whom this world rejoices. Who from our mothers arms, hath kept us on our way, with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today."
Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, and his mercy endures forever. Amen!
