Let’s face it: we’re being inundated by the advertisements for “black Friday” which has now spread to today (Wednesday) and the rest of the weekend…where is Thanksgiving along the way? Where is the faith? From the racial tensions sparked by the events in Ferguson, to ongoing terrorism, and to rampant commercialism, we need the Word of the Lord for “man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” (Deut. 8:3)

Let us gather to receive the Word this evening as we enter into Thanksgiving. Tonight is a simple service of the Word, a beautiful Vespers service, some good sacred music, and of course the sermon. I am preaching: “Christ Brings Hope.”

I will relate our lives to Deuteronomy 8 and consider what the Lord is actually calling us to be thankful for. There are things in this text that we aren’t naturally thankful for: things like being disciplined. Who wants to be thankful for that?! But we’re going to back up and reflect: how does the Lord really lead us to know thanksgiving? In Christ we come to know true thanksgiving. He is our hope and in Him we have the true basis for thanksgiving.

Invite a friend. Again, this is a simple and beautiful service of the Word.

May the Lord fill our hearts with thanksgiving for the love and mercy of God that we know in and through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Here is an excerpt from tonight’s sermon:

“Christ Brings Hope”

(Deuteronomy 8:1-10)

Pastor Espinosa

 

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. For the national day of thanksgiving our assigned Old Testament reading is from Deuteronomy. This is a reading that requires some explanation as we try to relate to it. It isn’t easy, but it is most definitely worth the effort. Moses is speaking to God’s people as they have completed their 40 year wilderness wanderings and they are about to enter the Promised Land. It’s true that they have much to be thankful for having finally come to the fruition of God’s great promise to them leading them into a land in which they will “lack nothing (Dt 8:9).” Talk about a blessing: being led to a place where your every need is met! Perhaps such a conviction about a blessed place is not far removed from what the first colonists thought about America as they realized the abundance of this land. In a short time, it wasn’t difficult for many of the Christians who came here to describe America as the new Jerusalem. We aren’t quite so idealistic, but even in the face of so many cultural maladies, it is still easy to count the many blessings the Lord has permitted us in our land. Indeed we have much to be thankful for!

But in order to engage in proper thanksgiving, not only did the Lord point His people in Deuteronomy to look forward, but just as importantly – if not more so – the Lord led them to look back. And this is where the word of explanation becomes necessary in trying to relate to the words of Moses from this last book in the Pentateuch: the proper comparison is not at all in treating our new Jerusalem as the United States of America, but the proper comparison is to treat our Promised Land, our new Jerusalem as our promise of heavenly glory. To begin to relate to these words therefore we need to ask ourselves about where our wilderness wanderings come in. Answer: we’re in them right now. And this is where Deuteronomy, especially becomes helpful to us today. The Lord is recounting reasons to be thankful in Deuteronomy. We are called to be thankful not only for the glory that is to come when we shall lack nothing, but we are called to “look back” but for us the “looking back” is to look at our lives now.

From the perspective of the Israelites their “now” (at the time) included the following:

• They were humbled as they were tested (verse 2).
• They were permitted to hunger as they were taught that they did not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God (verse 3).
• They were provided for and in an amazing way their provision did not wear out (verse 4).
• They were disciplined (verse 5).

Now I don’t know about you, but if I took the time this Thanksgiving to actually count my blessings, I’m not exactly naturally inclined to list those things in my life which have caused humiliation, painful testing, times of hunger (in its various forms), including times of apprehension about  things running out or wearing out, and of course, times of being disciplined. These aren’t the things that I consider – at least at first glance – of those things worthy of thanks. Discipline for example can come upon us in the most unpleasant ways. What some have called “the dark night of the soul” or what Scripture calls “the day of evil,” times when we are tested in ways that we suspect we’re about to die, when we wonder if this is what a nervous break-down feels like, when we believe that we’re experiencing the actual definition of despair and/or depression; when life tastes bitter and when the soul becomes familiar with fear. When these times come, we are tested. In some of these moments, Moses himself was willing for the Lord to take his life.

C.F.W. Walther, the first president of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, an amazing theologian, an astounding pastor once wrote these words about his time of discipline: “I may and must now reveal to you that the last half of the previous year has been one of the most difficult times of my life. I was physically incapable of attending to even half the office that I am dignified to carry out among you in unworthy fashion. Even more, the prospect that I would again be capable of the same became gloomier and darker month by month. I owe it to you to be transparent. I was tormented night and day by the thought that through my fault in many different ways, our congregation would withdraw with quick strides from the path of the first love and simplicity. And more than that, my own relationship with my God and Lord filled me with deep aversion and vexation. God placed before me, as never before, my entire past. He let me see my misery as I had never seen it before. I was filled with misery and distress. It appeared to me as though God had cast me away from His countenance. It seemed as though He regarded me as a rejected instrument, as if I were not a worker but a stumbling stone in His vineyard, which He must finally cast aside. It appeared to me as though God desired to take away all the blessings that He had thus far brought about through my witness to His truth, and this through a horrid end of my effectiveness. My only hope was a blessed death.” (Matthew C. Harrison, At Home in the House of My Fathers, Lutheran Legacy: 2009. 143)

But Walther went on: “But what happened? When the distress had reached its greatest intensity, help came.” (Ibid, 143) It’s sometimes hard for us to admit, but we can’t really be thankful nor can we properly handle the blessings we’re permitted to enjoy without having been properly forged through testing. This was why the Lord reviewed the hard times with His people, because they were about to receive rich blessings (because without humility all is lost). Luther taught: “the occasion which prosperity and abundance provide for transgressing the First Commandment. They turn the heart away much more strongly than adversity and want do, as he says in his song (Deut. 32:15): ‘Having become swollen, fat, and thick, he rebelled’; and (Prov. 1:32): ‘The prosperity of the foolish destroys them’; as is said also in the German proverb: ‘You need strong legs to hold up under good days.’ For man endures evil more easily than good, as the poet says, ‘Luxury has invaded as a deadlier foe.’” (Luther’s Works, American Edition Volume 9: 92)

Please come to service tonight for the rest!