Read: Psalm 50, Luke 17:11-19
This year for Thanksgiving, I am approaching the holiday with a different frame of mind. I want to count my blessings, but in a year of so many disruptions and disappointments, I’m finding it a little more challenging to be grateful. Instead of simply giving things for the few highlights from the year, I want to give thanks to God for the trials He has brought me through and consider them a grace in my life, essential for my spiritual growth.
In order to do so, I feel like we need to ask two leading questions: “What is God doing?” and “What does God require of us?”
Psalm 50 is one of my favorite psalms in the Bible. I love the sort of wit and derision in God’s tone. It’s not the way we are used to hearing Him speak, but it makes His point very clear. God is not interested in the sort of formality of our worship that neglects the heart. It’s something that cannot be gained by force, yet He will use a myriad of tactics to get us to surrender our will, humble our spirit, and offer our praise from the heart.
I’ll likely cover this psalm in greater detail when we get to our Summer Psalm series, but I wanted to focus on one phrase in particular, “Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving.” I have pondered over the meaning of these words for years now. I’m not sure I fully understand it, but as I face increasing trials of various kinds in my spiritual development, I am beginning to see this phrase more clearly in my humble submission to God.
Thanksgiving is Not About Us
It is easy to fall into a frame of thinking that worship is really about meeting some sort of need in our life. We have our expectations and preferences that, when they are not met, cause us to be critical and unwilling to participate. But we are not the focus in worship, God is.
When we start by asking what we like in worship, we fail to ask what God likes. God is not pleased when we are most happy. He is most glorified when we are most satisfied in Him. That is where we often err in our celebration of Thanksgiving. We only think to give thanks for the things that we liked. We neglect to acknowledge the grace of God in the trials and give thanks for the difficulties as well.
The psalm begins by pointing out the fury of the LORD. We saw this as we were looking at the Book of Revelation. He is worthy of our worship because of who He is. We can come into His presence and worship Him as His children, but we should never forget that we are coming to worship the holy and righteous judge of all creation. There needs to be a humble adoration towards God.
Gathering on Sunday should not be a second thought. Staying away for health reasons should be decided with great agony and disappointment. And even if we choose to worship online, it should be while we are still in bed or doing the dishes. We are coming into the presence of God. This is a serious matter.
Thanksgiving is Not About the Offering
God lays out what He wants in worship through His Word. In the Old Testament, He gave explicit instructions regarding the sacrificial system. But we can see clearly in this psalm that God is not interested in the sacrifices themselves. The sacrifices were meant to teach a greater principle that God wants to be a part of every aspect of our lives.
Everything we have already belongs to God. We are not giving God anything that He doesn’t already have. What He wants is vastly different from the offerings we bring. He wants our hearts, and it is perfectly possible to give Him everything in our life, while holding back our hearts.
I’m reminded of the story of a toddler who was being defiant to his parents, refusing to sit down. After a while of arguing back and forth, the child sat down and said, “I want you to know that I am standing up in my heart.” How appropriate for our own defiance against God.
The second half of this psalm describes how we have been complicit in the sins of this world, and because God has remained silent, we feel like we have gotten away with something. But God makes His point clear. He is not complicit in our sin. He is not like us. We cannot fashion Him in our own image. In fact, it is an act of God’s judgement to remain silent. It is a grace that God would confront us, because He cares enough to warn us that our sin is destroying us.
That is why we ought to give God thanks when times are difficult, because we can know that He has not abandoned us or given us up to our own desires. He is still steering us through the storms of life so that we will be transformed into the image of His Son. Rejoice when we find ourselves in trials of various kinds.
Thanksgiving is a Sacrifice
The thanks offering was a purely optional sacrifice. If you were feeling like doing a little bit more in your worship, you could add a little bit more. Because this was entirely voluntary, it came from a place of pure devotion. Yet, here in Psalm we see that the thanks offerings were what God desired from us all along.
My wife had a birthday this last week. At first, she was very subtle about what she expected from me. She was offering a few hints about what she wanted as far as gifts and ways to celebrate her special day. But as we got closer to her actual birthday and I hadn’t told her specifically what we were going to do, she started to get a little more direct. In fact, the day before her birthday, she posted a full page of expectations of what I was supposed to do for her.
God uses structures of worship as a subtle sign of what He really expects from us. We can be pretty think headed and miss the point. We can even be very literal and think that we are giving God exactly what He wants. But then we end up like the Pharisees who measured out their spices, but failed to give God the weightier things.
Ultimately, God wants us to depend on Him. Call to Him in your trouble and He will rescue you, then you will honor Him. Our sacrifices of thanksgiving really come from a greater understanding of God’s grace. We need to continually preach the gospel to ourselves in order to teach our hearts to worship. We need to remember what God has done for us so that we will be grateful. We need to trust God that the trials He is bringing us through is for our good. And we need to humble ourselves before a God who is worthy of all our adoration. God is not torturing us to cause trauma. He is teaching us to trust in Him.
Adam Miller is the president and host of Songtime Radio and serves as the pastor of South Chatham Community Church. This article is a condensed version of one of his sermons.