My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. It hasn’t been commericialized like Christmas. It is the most special time of the year for family and fellowship. And it is a time to remember for what we can be thankful and it is a time for the giving of thanks. This year especially, after the attack of September 11, it seems there has been more of a spirit and outpouring of thanks. Cable TV devotes numerous segments interviewing people on the street as to that for which they are thankful. The President gives a national address on the subject of Thanksgiving and reminding citizens of that for which we should be thankful.

Did you know there is a psalm actually titled "For Giving Thanks"? It is Psalm 100. I learned this psalm as a boy when my father taught us a song that went like this: "Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise. Be thankful unto Him and bless his name for the Lord is Good."

I understand from my study that this psalm was sung everyday in the synagogue services. It was a popular song in the medieval church. And today we quote this psalm when we sing:

All people that on earth do dwell.
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice.
Him serve with fear, His praise forth tell;
Come ye before him and rejoice.

The Lord ye know is God indeed: 
Without our aid He did us make;
We are His flock, He doth us feed,
And for His sheep He doth us take.

Oh, enter then His gates with praise,
Approach with joy His courts unto;
Praise, laud and bless His name always,
For it is seemly so to do.

For why? The Lord our God is good;
His mercy is forever sure;
His truth at all times firmly stood,
And shall from age to age endure.

Look at this psalm and read it with me. It is an eloquent summons to worship and thanksgiving.

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Worship is to be universal. "Shout for joy all the earth." The psalmist realizes that Israel does not have a monopoly on God. After all, it was God who had promised Abraham, "In you and your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." (Gen. 22:18)

And through the prophet Isaiah, God says, "And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord, to serve him, to love the name of the Lord and to worship him... these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer... for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations." (Is. 56:6,7)

Everyone owes God worship. So Psalm 100 is a call for all of us to worship God. And the worship is to be joyful. "Shout for joy to the Lord... Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with thankful songs." Joy and gladness are to characterize our worship. Why?

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Why worship God with gladness? Why come before him with thankful songs? Because the Lord is God. There is a God, God exists, and his name is Jehovah. That is enough reason to worship. What we know affects our worship, and when we really understand and know that God is, when God is a present reality to us, when we understand his name is I Am and what kind of God he really is, we have reason to worship.

Psalm 100 is the last of several psalms that celebrate God’s sovereignty and rule over the earth (beginning with Psalm 93). David has been stressing in these psalms truths such as "The Lord reigns, let the earth be glad... Shout for joy before the Lord, the King." The hundredth psalm is the final of these royal psalms. David is basically saying, "If God exists and if Jehovah is God, if God rules and is king, what can our worship be but joyful? Especially if God made us and if we are the sheep of his pasture! Away with sad faces and dreary sounding songs - when it comes to worshiping the God who truly exists and who is eternal and who is our maker and our shepherd, there should be joy, gladness, and singing in our worship.

But now David points to the real source of our joy in worshiping God -

GRATITUDE AND THANKSGIVING!

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Our worship is to be joyful simply because it is grateful. God’s temple (us) is to be filled with thanksgiving and praise. And observe to whom we are to be thankful. "...give thanks to him and praise his name..." So often on Thanksgiving Day we forget to whom it is we are to finally be thankful.

The story is told of a family sitting around a thanksgiving table. As was their tradition each one would express what they were thankful for before they carved into the turkey. One by one they had their say till they came to the five-year-old little boy. He began thanking the turkey, then his father for buying the turkey, then for the lady at the check out stand for checking it out, then for the farmer who made it so fat, then for the man who drove the truck that brought the turkey to the store... After going on for what seemed like an eternity, he asked, "Have I left anybody out?" In a typical patronizing fashion his older brother replied, "Yes, God." The little boy unflustered, said, "I was just about to get to him."

This might be a good question for us when it comes to giving thanks: Are we about to get to him?

TV journalists ask people for what they are thankful. The President urges citizens to give thanks. But to whom are we to give thanks? Thanksgiving presumes a God to whom we are to give thanks. When the pilgrims and Indians got together to give thanks for their survival, Who were they thanking? Not just each other. When George Washington proclaimed that Thanksgiving ought to be a national holiday for "favors bestowed on America", Who did he think bestowed these favors on America? When families gather around the dinner table, somebody will usually be asked to say the blessing? It isn’t the turkey who is blessed!

Evolutionists and secularists have tried to create a universe without God - to whom do they give thanks, and for what? This year there seems to be more of a recognition that there is a God out there to whom we are to give our thanks.

We are Christians. We can give thanks. We ought to give thanks. It is perfectly logical for us to give thanks. For there is a Creator out there - He exists, He made us and we are the sheep of his pasture. And we are to give thanks ...

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God is good. There it is again. So simple yet so profound. There is a God. His name is I Am. He made us and we are his. And He is good! And his love endures forever. We thank God not only for what he has done but for who He is. He is good and his goodness consists in his love and his faithfulness.

Today, for what are you thankful? For what would you like to especially give thanks to God? Our church meetings should have more of you and less of me in them! I want to give you a chance to verbalize your thanks this morning. For what are you thankful? Think. Be original. Heath thanks God for sugar! Can you thank God for something you may have taken for granted?