Thanksgiving!

# 2018. Dev. Ps. 50: 14,15. Thanksgiving!  Read all of Ps 50. The purpose of these devotionals is to draw Gremar and I closer to God and grow spiritually by applying His Word to our daily living. All passages are taken from the NIV.

 Psalm 50:14,15 “Sacrifice thank offerings to God, fulfill your vows to the Most High,¹⁵ and call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me.”

Ps. 50 is God addressing Israel; the faithful and the unfaithful. At the same time God speaks to us today. Vs. 1-6 is a preamble to God’s greatness, his power, his righteousness and justice; all of creation proclaims God’s greatness. In Ps. 50  God comes in judgment, perhaps anticipating David’s confession in Ps.51. V. 7 begins God’s voice in the first person. “Listen my people… I am God, your God.” God addresses all humans, believers and unbelievers. Although your sacrifices are continual, I do not need sacrifices, I have no need for them because all the animals (creation) everything is mine.

 God does not need our sacrifices; our worship, our praise, our good works, we have nothing to offer up to God. Apart from God’s grace we are empty, devoid of goodness, or righteousness. This harsh truth is unacceptable to the world and is hard to accept for followers of Jesus, we all like to think there is some good in us. When Jesus was called good, he answered “why do you call me good, only God is good”. It is not that we do not do good things, we do, we are created in God’s image after all, but only those recreated in Jesus Christ do work that is acceptable to God and follows us to heaven, becoming the building blocks for the New Heaven and the New Earth.

 God also addresses the unfaithful; vs.16-22 you will be destroyed, you join the thieves, the adulterers, those who reject me, hate me and my precepts. God says to them: “Consider this, those who sacrifice thank offerings honor me, and to the blameless I will show my salvation.”

 This is where vs.14,15 comes in, what God wants from us is thanksgiving, exactly what we do this week. Thanksgiving that includes our response to God’s grace; dependence on God, a Christ like World and Life View, good works in Christ’s name and living Christ in the face of the extreme opposition of the world. May the Spirit of Christ empower us! Thank you Lord Jesus for making us good. May we be truly thankful during this holiday time.

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