CHRISTIANS AND THANKSGIVING TO GOD 1
– After we have learn about God’s love for humans when He created Adam in his glorious image and gave him the breath of life and the freedom of choice, we Christians know that we should always be thankful to Him for such wonderful gifts and for giving us the chance to come back to Him as our Lord and Savior.
– I believe that each one of us have received many blessings from God since we came back to Him, therefore we should learn how to give Him proper thankfulness in order to solemnly express our gratitude toward Him.
– As we already know from this life, every time we thank someone, we have to come up with a proper manner and gift, if needed, so that our thankfulness could be received with appreciation.
– Because if we did not know how to thanks a person, our thanks could be rejected, or could make that person upsetting with misunderstanding, or even became an insult. That has happened a lot in real life.
– So, it is more important to know how to thanks God because we all want to continue receiving His blessings for the rest of our lives and for eternity, too.
– That’s why we must look into the Bible for instruction relating to how to give thanks to God properly.
– In the time of Moses, every time an Israelite wanted to make an offering to God as an expression of thankfulness, he must do it according to God’s instruction that He had given to Moses:
LEVITICUS 7: 12-13 – If they offer it as an expression of thankfulness, then along with this thank offering they are to offer thick loaves made without yeast and with olive oil mixed in, thin loaves made without yeast and brushed with oil, and thick loaves of the finest flour well-kneaded and with oil mixed in. Along with their fellowship offering of thanksgiving they are to present an offering with thick loaves of bread made with yeast.
LÊ-VI-KÝ 7: 12-13 – Nếu ai dâng của lễ đó đặng cảm tạ, thì phải dâng chung với của lễ thù ân những bánh nhỏ không pha men, chế dầu, bánh tráng không pha men thoa dầu, bột lọc trộn làm bánh nhỏ chế dầu, lại phải thêm bánh có pha men mà dâng với của lễ thù ân cảm tạ.
– Some people have tried to understand the meanings of things that offered to God, but we should understand the basic of that instruction. It means we, as God’s children, must express our thankfulness to Him according to what He really wants, not what we think He wanted.
– With help from the Bible, we can know exactly how God wants His children to thank Him and what kinds of offering Christians can dedicate to Him to express our thankfulness to Him.
– But before we go into details of thanksgiving we Christians can offer to God, I want to clarify thankfulness and praise. The first is usually express with speaking words, offerings or action including singing. The second is usually express with songs and poems as another format for words.
– Because of that distinctive clarification, we will have two different themes as Christians and Thanksgiving to God and Christians Praise The Lord and we will study them eventually as we are starting doing it right now.
– According to God’s instruction that was recorded in the Bible, we, as God’s children, both Christians and Israelites, should vive thanks to God at the beginning and the end of a day:
1CHRONICLES 23: 30 – They were also to stand every morning to thank and praise the Lord. They were to do the same in the evening.
1SỬ KÝ 23: 30 – Mỗi buổi sớm và buổi chiều, họ phải đứng tại đó cảm tạ và ngợi khen Đức Giê-hô-va.
– The reason is each day in our lives is marked with blessings from God, as it was written in the Scripture:
PSALM 92: 2 – Proclaiming Your love in the morning and Your faithfulness at night.
THI THIÊN 92: 2 – Buổi sáng tỏ ra sự nhân từ Chúa, và ban đêm truyền ra sự thành tín của Ngài.
– As we can experience in real life, most of crimes happen at night, when there is not enough light to see things clearly. Therefore after passing a night without incident we should thank God in the morning for a peaceful night and a good sleep.
– But many things can also happen during the day, at work, at school, on the street, in office, in factory. That’s why Christians should thank God at the end of a day for being safe and for any blessing that we have received during the day.
PSALM 91: 5-6 – You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday.
THI THIÊN 91: 5-6 – Ngươi sẽ chẳng sợ hoặc sự kinh khiếp ban đêm, hoặc tên bay ban ngày, hoặc dịch lệ lây ra trong tối tăm, hay là sự tàn diệt phá hoại đang lúc trưa.
– So, accordingly, Christians should always be thankful to God for His blessings and protection at least twice each passing day of our lives on this Earth and for all eternity:
PSALM 30: 12 – That my heart may sing Your praises and not be silent. Lord my God, I will praise You forever
THI THIÊN 30: 12 – Hầu cho linh hồn tôi hát ngợi khen Chúa không nín lặng. Hỡi Giê-hô-va Đức Chúa Trời tôi, tôi sẽ cảm tạ Chúa đến đời đời.
– Another reason that makes us to thank God is the forgiveness He has given us each day for some actions or thought that were against His commands and standards that were set forth in the Bible for us:
1CHRONICLES 16: 34 – Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever.
1SỬ KÝ 16: 34 – Hãy cảm tạ Đức Giê-hô-va, vì Ngài là nhân từ; Sự thương xót Ngài còn đến đời đời.
– Although God’s mercy and forgiveness on us endures forever as the Scripture says so, but Christians should always be quick in repentance in order to receive them. Please do not ever think that God would forgive a person who kept committing sins intentionally non stop.
HEBREWS 10: 26 – If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left.
HÊ-BƠ-RƠ 10: 26 – Vì nếu chúng ta đã nhận biết lẽ thật rồi, mà lại cố ý phạm tội, thì không còn có tế lễ chuộc tội nữa.
– According to the law in the Bible, anyone who deliberately sinned against God and disobeyed His commands was mocking and despising Him, and that kind of attitude makes his thankfulness becoming useless or even an act of hypocrisy.
NUMBERS 15: 30 – But anyone who sins defiantly, whether native-born or foreigner, blasphemes the Lord and must be cut off from the people of Israel.
DÂN SỐ KÝ 15: 30 – Nhưng ai cố ý phạm tội, hoặc người sanh trong xứ, hay là khách ngoại bang, thì ai đó khinh bỉ Đức Giê-hô-va; người sẽ bị truất khỏi dân sự mình.
– Therefore during the time of Thanksgiving season, Christians should be careful to keep ourselves from sinning in order to have our thankfulness received by God and be blessed by Him in return for the remainder of the year and for the new year that is coming.
– In the time of Moses, there were the Levites who were chosen to perform thanksgiving to God everyday in the temple on the behalf of the whole nation of Israel, but in this present time Christians are called the chosen people belong to the royal priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ and our bodies are the new temple of God, so we should give thanks to Him everyday in our lives:
1PETER 2: 9 – But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
1PHI-E-RƠ 2: 9 – Nhưng anh em là dòng giống được lựa chọn, là chức thầy tế lễ nhà vua, là dân thánh, là dân thuộc về Đức Chúa Trời, hầu cho anh em rao giảng nhân đức của Đấng đã gọi anh em ra khỏi nơi tối tăm, đến nơi sáng láng lạ lùng của Ngài.
1CORINTHIANS 6: 19 – Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own.
1CÔ-RINH-TÔ 6: 19 – Anh em há chẳng biết rằng thân thể mình là đền thờ của Đức Thánh Linh đang ngự trong anh em, là Đấng mà anh em đã nhận bởi Đức Chúa Trời, và anh em chẳng phải thuộc về chính mình sao?
– As I have said that when we give thanks to God, we have to do it properly so that our thanksgiving would be received by God and please Him, therefore we have to give thanks wholeheartedly:
PSALM 9: 1 – I will give thanks to You, Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of all Your wonderful deeds.
THI THIÊN 9: 1 – Tôi sẽ hết lòng cảm tạ Đức Giê-hô-va, tỏ ra các công việc lạ lùng của Ngài.
– But some Christians have not thanked God will all their hearts and then wondered why they did not feel satisfied with their Christian lives. The reason is that if we thanked God not in the way He wanted, we could not expect any blessing from Him.
– God’s way is completely different from human’s way so nobody should use human’s way to please Him, as the Scripture has said so:
ISAIAH 55: 9 – As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Ê-SAI 55: 9 – Vì các từng trời cao hơn đất bao nhiêu, thì đường lối ta cao hơn đường lối các ngươi, ý tưởng ta cao hơn ý tưởng các ngươi cũng bấy nhiêu.
– God is not a fortune spirit to let humans ignore, forget and disrespect Him but must fulfill His duty to bless humans with whatever they want. Other people can do that to their idols but Christians must not do that to God.
– Therefore Christians should understand the importance of thanksgiving to God and should know exactly how to thanks Him properly in order to continue receiving His blessings as rewards for the rest of our lives and for eternity.
– We will study on this subject some more time in order to be certain of what we need to do in our thanksgiving to God. May God be pleased with our thankfulness in this season and bless us accordingly. Amen.