Deuteronomy 8:1-10; 1 Timothy 2:1-4; St Luke 17:11-19
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, and His mercy endureth forever.
Indeed the Lord is good. And, as you have learned from the Small Catechism, He gives daily bread, apart from your prayer, even to all evil people. He causes the sun to shine and the rain to fall on both the wicked and the good. But He would have you pray to Him that by His Word and Holy Spirit you would realize His sheer grace and mercy and receive His many good gifts with thanksgiving.
And that is why we are here this evening. That we might be catechized by the Word of the Lord to know and believe and confess that every good gift and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, as St James writes. This is the direction. All that you need for this body and life, and all that you need for the life and salvation to come, is gift to you. And then we, in return, should give Him the only thing we have to offer: thanksgiving for His gifts.
Do we not sing and confess with the whole Church in heaven and on earth in the celebration of the Holy Communion, “It is truly meet, right, and salutary, that we should at all times and in all places, give thanks to You, holy Lord, almighty Father, everlasting God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
It is for this reason that one common name for the Sacrament of the Altar is “The Eucharist,” the Greek word of “thanksgiving,” as when the our Lord Jesus Christ took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it to the disciples. The fundamental pattern of the entire Christian faith and life is rooted and expressed in the giving and receiving of our Lord’s Body and Blood with thanksgiving.
As you heard from St Paul in his Epistle to St Timothy, he urges that first of all, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions. This is all for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, who by His Cross has reconciled the world to the Father. Which is why St Paul goes on to say in the same Epistle, Everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the Word of Gd and prayer (1 Tim 4:4-5).
People loved by God, this is how you are catechized, not only in the celebration and reception of the Sacrament throughout your life, but to recognize and give thanks for the gracious hand of God in all things, in the food that you eat, the clothes that you wear, the home that shelters you, and the family, friends, and neighbors who surround you.
The blessed truth is that in our Lord’s creation and preservation of all thing, including your body and soul, eyes, ears, and all your members, your reason and all your senses, you experience and receive the same fatherly divine goodness and mercy that you receive in His forgiveness of your sins. Not that its the same gift, but it is the same grace of the same Triune God. For just as the Lord feeds and clothes the earth and all its creatures, the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, and use as He feeds and clothes you for this body and life on earth, so does He also feed and clothe you with His forgiveness, life, and salvation here in His House, the holy Temple of His Church.
Thanksgiving resides in the heart of faith and rises from it in gratitude and love. Unfortunately also from your heart of sin you fail to acknowledge the constant grace and providence of the Holy Triune God. We are rather prone to pride ourselves in all the good that we enjoy, while blaming God and others for whatever bad we suffer. Maybe it takes a national holiday to remind you of your duty to thank, praise, serve and obey the Lord your God for all His gifts and benefits.
As sinners we are constantly in need of reminders of God’s grace. For our fallen flesh is always inclined to turn away from he Lord while we vainly attempt to make a preserve life for ourselves. Like Adam and Eve, instead of rejoicing in all that God has freely bestowed, we choose to live as a god unto ourselves, despite the obvious fact that every breath we take is from the Lord.
It is by His Word and Spirit that the Lord in His mercy turns you back around. By His Word and Spirit that He pulls you out of your own heart and head and turns you away from sin and death. He does this so that you might receive the life that He bestows upon you in humble faith and with thanksgiving.
By His Word of the Law His Spirit exposes the depths of your sin and the utter futility of trying to make it through life on your own. He brings you to that sobering knowledge, not only by the preaching of the Scriptures, but also by confronting you with the challenges of mortal life in a perishing world. Like lepers cut off from the community, you experience poverty, hunger, sickness, family strife, and so many griefs and sorrows.
Then by the preaching of the Gospel the Spirit present you with the one and only solution to your otherwise hopeless condition. For the Gospel conveys that Christ, the almighty and eternal Son of the living God, has taken all the challenges of life and death upon Himself, bearing them all in His Body on the Cross. By this He shows Himself to be your High Priest who offers Himself as a the Sacrifice to cleanse you of your leprosy of sin and restore you to fellowship with His Father and Holy Spirit. It is by His Resurrection, through His Word and Sacrament of His Gospel that He bestows upon your body and soul the free and full forgiveness of His Cross.
He gives this all to you by grace. The Lord your God, the blessed Holy Trinity, cleanses you of in and washes you like a newborn infant in the waters of Holy Baptism. He proclaims Himself, His love and mercy, through your ears and into your heart and life by the Word of Christ. He lays the life-giving treasures of His Cross upon your lips and tongue in the Holy Communion. These blessed, life saving gifts, are received by faith, even as they were for the Samaritan leper. All were cleansed, but only he turned back in faith to worship the Lord His God, falling at Jesus’ feet, and receiving the fullness of the gift in salvation.
Jesus does no less for you. By way of His Law He is always driving you and forcing you back to His Cross. By His Gospel from the self-same Cross He raises you up by faith to newness of life in His Resurrection.
Even so, the sad reality is that the vast majority of people do not receive their daily bread with thanksgiving. We heard the example of those nine other lepers whom Jesus healed. All received the gracious gift of God in Christ, all were physically healed, but only one returned to worship Him in faith with thanksgiving.
It is the same way today. St Paul rhetorically asks, What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? (1 Cor 4:7). Many refuse to acknowledge His grace and His gifts with thanksgiving. How often do we fail to give Him thanks?!
In all times and in all places, then, it is the work of the Spirit through the Law and Gospel of God’s Word read and preached that you are delivered from the ingratitude and hardness of your hard. Not only for you, but for your neighbors in the world. The Law is already working on everyone in the challenges of this mortal life. But the saving promises of the Gospel remain hidden until they are confessed in the words and actions of Christians like yourself.
Indeed you exercise your gratitude to the Lord your God in no better way than by demonstrating the forgiveness, love, and mercy of Christ Jesus in dealing with your neighbors, family, and friends. And then, by the grace of God, perhaps your words and actions of love will lead your loved ones to the House of the Lord that they might receive His Gospel Word and Sacraments with faith and thanksgiving.
We confess with the Psalmist: Blessed is the one You choose and bring near, to dwell in Your courts! We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Your House, the holiness of Your Temple! (Ps 65:4)
With this in mind, consider what you heard from Moses tonight - the instruction of the Lord in the Christian faith and life by His dealings with Israel. For this is a description of His Law and His Gospel actively at work in the history of His people.
During their forty years of wandering, following the Exodus from Egypt, He humbled them with His Law, allowed them to go hungry, that they might feel their need for Him and for His provision. Then He fed them with manna from heaven, a miraculous bread of life, given by His Word of promise that they might learn to trust His grace and lean upon His Word at all times.
In this way, says the Lord, the people were disciplined to live as the children of God. And having become His children by the grace of His Word and Spirit, they were given the Land of Promise, a land flowing with milk and honey, in which they enjoyed the blessings of their Father who art in heaven.
In all of this, you are hearing not only the story of ancient Israel, but also a description of your own Christian life. For you also are disciplined as a child of God by His Law, and fed by His Gospel in love and mercy. You also are nourished with the Living Bread from heaven, set before your by His gracious Word of Promise: “Take, eat; Take, drink; this is My Body, this is My Blood, given and poured out for you.”
Having become His child by the washing of the water with His Word, you are on a pilgrimage with Christ Jesus, through the wilderness of this life, into the Good Land of everlasting Milk and Honey. On the way, even now in the midst of sin and death, by faith you are able to see and acknowledge the hand of your dear Father in all the temporal blessings of this body and life.
And as the Lord Himself has promised, And you shall eat and be full and you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land He has given you, here in time and hereafter in eternity.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, and His mercy endureth forever.
Indeed the Lord is good. And, as you have learned from the Small Catechism, He gives daily bread, apart from your prayer, even to all evil people. He causes the sun to shine and the rain to fall on both the wicked and the good. But He would have you pray to Him that by His Word and Holy Spirit you would realize His sheer grace and mercy and receive His many good gifts with thanksgiving.
And that is why we are here this evening. That we might be catechized by the Word of the Lord to know and believe and confess that every good gift and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, as St James writes. This is the direction. All that you need for this body and life, and all that you need for the life and salvation to come, is gift to you. And then we, in return, should give Him the only thing we have to offer: thanksgiving for His gifts.
Do we not sing and confess with the whole Church in heaven and on earth in the celebration of the Holy Communion, “It is truly meet, right, and salutary, that we should at all times and in all places, give thanks to You, holy Lord, almighty Father, everlasting God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
It is for this reason that one common name for the Sacrament of the Altar is “The Eucharist,” the Greek word of “thanksgiving,” as when the our Lord Jesus Christ took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it to the disciples. The fundamental pattern of the entire Christian faith and life is rooted and expressed in the giving and receiving of our Lord’s Body and Blood with thanksgiving.
As you heard from St Paul in his Epistle to St Timothy, he urges that first of all, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions. This is all for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, who by His Cross has reconciled the world to the Father. Which is why St Paul goes on to say in the same Epistle, Everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the Word of Gd and prayer (1 Tim 4:4-5).
People loved by God, this is how you are catechized, not only in the celebration and reception of the Sacrament throughout your life, but to recognize and give thanks for the gracious hand of God in all things, in the food that you eat, the clothes that you wear, the home that shelters you, and the family, friends, and neighbors who surround you.
The blessed truth is that in our Lord’s creation and preservation of all thing, including your body and soul, eyes, ears, and all your members, your reason and all your senses, you experience and receive the same fatherly divine goodness and mercy that you receive in His forgiveness of your sins. Not that its the same gift, but it is the same grace of the same Triune God. For just as the Lord feeds and clothes the earth and all its creatures, the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, and use as He feeds and clothes you for this body and life on earth, so does He also feed and clothe you with His forgiveness, life, and salvation here in His House, the holy Temple of His Church.
Thanksgiving resides in the heart of faith and rises from it in gratitude and love. Unfortunately also from your heart of sin you fail to acknowledge the constant grace and providence of the Holy Triune God. We are rather prone to pride ourselves in all the good that we enjoy, while blaming God and others for whatever bad we suffer. Maybe it takes a national holiday to remind you of your duty to thank, praise, serve and obey the Lord your God for all His gifts and benefits.
As sinners we are constantly in need of reminders of God’s grace. For our fallen flesh is always inclined to turn away from he Lord while we vainly attempt to make a preserve life for ourselves. Like Adam and Eve, instead of rejoicing in all that God has freely bestowed, we choose to live as a god unto ourselves, despite the obvious fact that every breath we take is from the Lord.
It is by His Word and Spirit that the Lord in His mercy turns you back around. By His Word and Spirit that He pulls you out of your own heart and head and turns you away from sin and death. He does this so that you might receive the life that He bestows upon you in humble faith and with thanksgiving.
By His Word of the Law His Spirit exposes the depths of your sin and the utter futility of trying to make it through life on your own. He brings you to that sobering knowledge, not only by the preaching of the Scriptures, but also by confronting you with the challenges of mortal life in a perishing world. Like lepers cut off from the community, you experience poverty, hunger, sickness, family strife, and so many griefs and sorrows.
Then by the preaching of the Gospel the Spirit present you with the one and only solution to your otherwise hopeless condition. For the Gospel conveys that Christ, the almighty and eternal Son of the living God, has taken all the challenges of life and death upon Himself, bearing them all in His Body on the Cross. By this He shows Himself to be your High Priest who offers Himself as a the Sacrifice to cleanse you of your leprosy of sin and restore you to fellowship with His Father and Holy Spirit. It is by His Resurrection, through His Word and Sacrament of His Gospel that He bestows upon your body and soul the free and full forgiveness of His Cross.
He gives this all to you by grace. The Lord your God, the blessed Holy Trinity, cleanses you of in and washes you like a newborn infant in the waters of Holy Baptism. He proclaims Himself, His love and mercy, through your ears and into your heart and life by the Word of Christ. He lays the life-giving treasures of His Cross upon your lips and tongue in the Holy Communion. These blessed, life saving gifts, are received by faith, even as they were for the Samaritan leper. All were cleansed, but only he turned back in faith to worship the Lord His God, falling at Jesus’ feet, and receiving the fullness of the gift in salvation.
Jesus does no less for you. By way of His Law He is always driving you and forcing you back to His Cross. By His Gospel from the self-same Cross He raises you up by faith to newness of life in His Resurrection.
Even so, the sad reality is that the vast majority of people do not receive their daily bread with thanksgiving. We heard the example of those nine other lepers whom Jesus healed. All received the gracious gift of God in Christ, all were physically healed, but only one returned to worship Him in faith with thanksgiving.
It is the same way today. St Paul rhetorically asks, What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? (1 Cor 4:7). Many refuse to acknowledge His grace and His gifts with thanksgiving. How often do we fail to give Him thanks?!
In all times and in all places, then, it is the work of the Spirit through the Law and Gospel of God’s Word read and preached that you are delivered from the ingratitude and hardness of your hard. Not only for you, but for your neighbors in the world. The Law is already working on everyone in the challenges of this mortal life. But the saving promises of the Gospel remain hidden until they are confessed in the words and actions of Christians like yourself.
Indeed you exercise your gratitude to the Lord your God in no better way than by demonstrating the forgiveness, love, and mercy of Christ Jesus in dealing with your neighbors, family, and friends. And then, by the grace of God, perhaps your words and actions of love will lead your loved ones to the House of the Lord that they might receive His Gospel Word and Sacraments with faith and thanksgiving.
We confess with the Psalmist: Blessed is the one You choose and bring near, to dwell in Your courts! We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Your House, the holiness of Your Temple! (Ps 65:4)
With this in mind, consider what you heard from Moses tonight - the instruction of the Lord in the Christian faith and life by His dealings with Israel. For this is a description of His Law and His Gospel actively at work in the history of His people.
During their forty years of wandering, following the Exodus from Egypt, He humbled them with His Law, allowed them to go hungry, that they might feel their need for Him and for His provision. Then He fed them with manna from heaven, a miraculous bread of life, given by His Word of promise that they might learn to trust His grace and lean upon His Word at all times.
In this way, says the Lord, the people were disciplined to live as the children of God. And having become His children by the grace of His Word and Spirit, they were given the Land of Promise, a land flowing with milk and honey, in which they enjoyed the blessings of their Father who art in heaven.
In all of this, you are hearing not only the story of ancient Israel, but also a description of your own Christian life. For you also are disciplined as a child of God by His Law, and fed by His Gospel in love and mercy. You also are nourished with the Living Bread from heaven, set before your by His gracious Word of Promise: “Take, eat; Take, drink; this is My Body, this is My Blood, given and poured out for you.”
Having become His child by the washing of the water with His Word, you are on a pilgrimage with Christ Jesus, through the wilderness of this life, into the Good Land of everlasting Milk and Honey. On the way, even now in the midst of sin and death, by faith you are able to see and acknowledge the hand of your dear Father in all the temporal blessings of this body and life.
And as the Lord Himself has promised, And you shall eat and be full and you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land He has given you, here in time and hereafter in eternity.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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