“Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise; be thankful unto Him, and bless His name. 5. For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations.”
The last two verses of Psalm 100 tell us a lot about thanksgiving. For a Christian, being thankful is not just a nice gesture; rather, it is a Christian necessity. We should “be thankful unto Him." We should be thankful because of God’s eternal goodness towards us: “For the Lord is good.” In what ways do we see His goodness? He is good to us. When Jesus walked on the earth, He revealed God’s goodness to us. Everywhere He went, Jesus did good to people. Those who were blind were enabled to see. Those who were deaf were enabled to hear. Those who were lame were enabled to walk. The Lord has been good to me, and I imagine that you can, or should, say the same. This brings us to Isaiah 53:6: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him (Jesus) the iniquity of us all.” We should be thankful because of God’s everlasting mercy. A good definition of mercy is “loving kindness.” This means that God’s mercy toward us has no limit. God’s wrath is seen when we have shoved His mercy aside, and have chosen to go our own (or the devil’s) way. God has mercy on us in spite of our sins. 1 Peter 1:3: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again unto a lively (living) hope.” Romans 5:8: “But God commends His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” God’s mercy should be contagious. That means that since God has been so merciful toward us, we should show that mercy to other people. (This is easy to write, but it takes real faith to accomplish it in our daily dealings with people.) We should be thankful because of God’s enduring, and eternal, truth: “and His truth endures to all generations.” God’s truth is everlasting and ever present. We cannot deny the Ten Commandments, because they are God’s truth. We cannot deny the truth’s given in the Lord’s Prayer because they are eternal. We cannot deny the validity of the “Golden Rule,” which tells us “to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.” We cannot deny the truth given in 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” We cannot deny that if we will sincerely accept Jesus Christ by faith, He will forgive us in spite of our sins. Are you a thankful person? You have every reason to be thankful! Praise God and thank Him. Bro. Joe
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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