Today is a national day of thanksgiving. A national holiday, official national holiday. Now, we take that for granted, I guess, but that's rather unusual in this world. How many nations do you suppose have a special day of thanksgiving? I mean official, nationally-indicated day for thanksgiving. It all began, of course, 400 years ago, almost 400 years ago, with the Pilgrim Fathers, a persecuted minority in England. So, they went to Holland, and they weren't treated much better there, unfortunately. So, they went back to England and decided to ship off to the New World, which they did under great hazards. And after a very, very difficult first year in which half of the company died, they finally seemed to survive and had a day of thanksgiving. It was very informal for a couple hundred years until Abraham Lincoln's presidency, where this day, I think it's the third Thursday of the month, I'm not quite sure about that, has been declared as a national day of Thanksgiving. And virtually all presidents since Lincoln have issued proclamation calling the nation to prayer, urging the people of the land to go to their houses of worship to thank God. Now, I used to always read the president's proclamations at Thanksgiving services when I was a young pastor. a long time ago, and I scoured the paper this morning. I couldn't find one, so I hope President Obama has also issued a proclamation calling us not only to be thankful, but to be thankful to him from whom all our benefits really come. But having come to the house of the Lord for that purpose, of course, we look to God's word for our direction and our motivation for thanksgiving. And so we now turn to Psalm 116, and I encourage you to follow the reading of this scripture. The text for this morning's message will be verses 12, 13, and 14. We will read the first 14 chapters. What you're about to hear is the very word of God. I love the Lord. because he has heard my voice and my plea for mercy. Because he has inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live. The snares of death encompassed me. The pains of Sheol took hold upon me. I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of the Lord. O Lord, I pray, deliver my soul. Gracious is the Lord and righteous. Our God is merciful. The Lord preserves the simple. When I was brought low, he saved me. Return, O my soul, to your rest. For the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living. I believed even when I spoke, I am greatly afflicted. I said in my alarm, all men are liars. What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people. This is the word of the Lord, and all God's people said, Amen. Dear friends in Christ our Lord, recently President Obama said that the United States is not a Christian nation. He said it is a nation of many religions, Buddhism, Sikhism, Islam, Judaism, and technically he is right. But it is true, and I hope he realized it, that many of the founders of this nation were specifically motivated by their Christian commitment. After all, the Bible does say, blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. But then it goes on to say, the people whom he has chosen for his own possession. In other words, a nation is Christian only to the extent that there are believers within that nation who stand as a testimony of the faith. So I guess we can't call ourselves a Christian nation, but we should be thankful in this time of Thanksgiving for founders of our country who were consciously aware of the motivation of their own Christian commitment. I'm going to give you just a few of them. And Patrick Henry, those of us who remember our childhood classes in grade school remember that he was the one who said, give me liberty or give me death, the great patriot. But he said a lot more than that. And this is one of his other quotes I quote now. It cannot be emphasized too strongly that this nation was founded not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ, unquote. Patrick Henry. Listen to what James Madison, called the father of our Constitution, had the primary responsibility for writing the Constitution. There was a committee of five, but he was designated the major writer. This is what he said. We have staked the whole of our political institutions on the capacity to govern ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God. Unquote. John Jay was one of those five original writers of the Constitution. And he was also the first appointed Supreme Court justice in the land. This is what he said, quote, Americans should select and prefer Christians as their leaders. And of course, we can't leave Washington out of this, can we? General Washington, who became the first president Washington of this land, And he said, in his first prayer for the nation, yes, it was a common practice for the president to pray in this country. And I remember at our radio in the 30s, hearing Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was not particularly known for his piety, nonetheless, pray for our nation in Jesus' name. I heard that prayer recently in a program on television. And the name of Jesus was omitted. But this is the prayer for the nation from George Washington, our first president. We make our earnest prayer that thou will keep the United States in thy holy protection. Grant our supplication, we beseech thee, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. If you've ever visited in Washington, and I know some of you have because Elaine used to take students there. If you've ever visited the Supreme Court building, the massive doors leading into the main chambers of the Supreme Court building are about 10 feet high and about 4 inches thick. And in these doors are carved the Ten Commandments. And behind the wall, where the justices of our land sit, the Ten Commandments are etched into the wall. Well, to make one more example, I hope there are not too many of my former students here, because I always tell them, get to the point. You don't have such long introductions. But I'm not practicing what I teach right now. But after a while, this is a weekday service, isn't it? OK? More than half my life ago, I had a tour of duty at Marine Corps Base, Quantico, Virginia. And there was not housing available to us at the time, government housing on the base, base housing. So we had to live in Arlington. That was only 30 miles away, and I commuted. That wasn't very difficult. Well, Arlington is right next to Washington, D.C., and our children were small, but Doris is a student of history, and she made sure our kids visited every possible national site of any importance at all. and their favorite was the George Washington Monument. The George Washington Monument is the tallest public structure in the 65 acres of the Washington, D.C. area. You can take an elevator up to the very, almost to the top, the very, just below the cap, and see the capital city in all directions. You can even, well, I don't think you can do that anymore, but back then we could walk up the stairs, 898 stairs. And about every 50 stairs there was a platform where you could get your breath back again for the next stage. And in the wall were scripture texts and prayers from our former presidents, from the former presidents for our nation. I understand now you can't take the stairs because they're afraid someone might have a suicide bomb attached to them and blow the place up on the way. But very few people know that at the top of the Washington Monument, there is a pyramid-like structure made of aluminum that glistens in the sun. And upon that cap are written two words. Laus Deo. 555 feet up. The highest structure in our capital city. Two words, which in Latin mean, which in English mean, praise God. Imagine when the sun rises in the east. The first structure in our capital city that catches the morning light is the Washington Monument, where it says, "Praise God!" But times have changed. And we all know it. Recently, the Supreme Court judge of the state of Alabama was removed from office. for constructing the Ten Commandments on the front lawn of the courthouse. Not long ago, a school superintendent was placed on leave of absence without pay for taking down a display in the school cafeteria, where the Ten Commandments were written upon them. And the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union, took the Pentagon to court. The Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard to court. For sponsoring Boy Scout troops on military bases. And they won, because the Boy Scouts had a little oath. On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and country. Yes, I was a Boy Scout, and I made that little oath. What have we come to? How did we get to this point where we can't acknowledge God in the public sector? Doesn't that make you depressed, a little discouraged? Well, I hope not. I hope not. We believe in God, and he is sovereign. And the opposition of human beings will never prevail. The gates of hell will not prevail again. The church of God that is faithful. I think it's probably been a little too easy to be known as a Christian in our country. And maybe we're being tested a little now and to force us to stand up and be counted. I don't think it's such a bad thing to see all this opposition to the Christian gospel. In the world, you will have tribulation. Words of Jesus. Why should we be surprised at that? Besides, public monuments with scripture texts on them will not make us a Christian nation. Plaques with the Ten Commandments written on them hanging in our public buildings will not guarantee obedience to those commandments. Be wonderful, wouldn't it, if our nation obeyed the Ten Commandments? If we were really a godly nation and did God's, abided by God's law, If that would happen, we could close our prisons. We could cut our police forces in half. All they'd have to do is direct traffic. No one would be violating any law. We obeyed the Ten Commandments. 17,000 lives would be spared every year because we wouldn't have people killed by drunken drivers. A couple of our acquaintance was just recent, just before we returned from our summer visits in the Midwest, killed by a drunken driver, wiped them both out. And some of their children were members of Derrick's Church in Orland Park, Illinois, and he had to minister to those. Citizens who live by the word of God are a blessing to a nation. Oh, we're not perfect. Christians of all people know they aren't perfect. Because Christians know they need a savior. They need a savior because we're so imperfect and unrighteous in ourselves. But citizens who live by the word of God are not causing domestic violence. are not promoting drug devastation, are not sticking up 7-Elevens and banks, are they? Not promoting prostitution and corruption in business and politics. Can you imagine what the cost of welfare would be like? How little it would be if everyone were faithful to the Ten Commandments. Believers are a bargain to any nation. a blessing to any people. And that's where we come in. I'm going to get to this text in a hurry now. This is where we come in. We must be thankful to God on behalf of our citizens who won't be thankful. We must be thankful to bring the voice of the whole nation to God in praise for his gifts and goodness. Because not all will acknowledge him. So for us, this is not a day of indulgence and not a weekend of commercialization. I mentioned earlier that I went through the morning paper for a proclamation from our president and didn't find one. But with that paper were about 10 pounds of ads. I was just shocked at how large, because Black Friday is tomorrow. when the businesses of the country expect to be in the black, finally. That's how it all began. So the question comes to us, how well, how shall we thank God? And, of course, the Word of God answers that question. It asks the question and answers the question. Here are the texts once more. What shall I render to the Lord? It's as though the psalmist is saying, how is it possible to thank God enough? What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me? And then he answers the question. And his answer sort of, fortunately, has three parts to it, doesn't it? I will lift up the cup of salvation. That's the number one. How shall we thank God? Lift up the cup of salvation. Secondly, and call on the name of the Lord. That's the second way in which we are to thank God. And then finally, I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people. There you have it. How shall we thank God? Well, first of all, by taking the cup of salvation. You know, the Bible has this wonderful metaphor of a cup. But the cup is always something, a vessel that's sort of neutral. It's what's in the cup that is always important. And the scripture tells us that there are cups that have contents that are beneficial and nourishing and life-enriching. But there are also cups that are filled with harmful potions, destructive results, cups that are literally deadly. Everything depends on what's in the cup. In Isaiah 51, verse 17, Isaiah gives us an example of a cup that has poisonous content. We read, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, awake, rise up, you who have been drinking from the Lord the cup of his wrath. And then he goes on to say it's because of their unfaithfulness that they are now spiritually impoverished and their thirsts are never quenched. And then a little later in the chapter he says, don't any longer drink from a cup that makes you stagger. Well, that was the wrong kind of a cup. What the psalmist has before here is the opposite. It's a cup of salvation, the greatest blessing, isn't it? That for which we should be most thankful is the salvation that God provides for those who respond in faith to the gospel. Imagine, there really is forgiveness of sins. There really is eternal life to those who drink of the cup of salvation. In the New Testament life, to drink the cup of salvation means to believe and trust in the Lord Jesus. Jesus, who must be crowned Lord and Master of our lives. Jesus, the greatest gift of the Heavenly Father for a lost world that would have been gone without him. Jesus, who filled the cup of salvation to overflowing, running over for all who trust in him. Today, I'm sure you will recount many blessings for which we should be thankful. But too often, we focus on the material blessings of life, which are from God's hand, of mercy as well, and blessings of family and friends and livelihood. But let Jesus be number one on your list. Let him be the one through whom we know God has shown his greatest favor to the children of men. God is most honored in life. And we are most thankful if we take of the cup of salvation that he has provided. My own mother-in-law taught me that lesson. We were visiting Doris' mom. She was 92 and in failing health. And she was the last about to go. And while we were conversing, she sort of right out of the blue said, you know, the Lord is most honored when people come to repentance and faith. And of course, we agreed. We said, yeah, Mom, that's the way it is. Well, but she said, you're not getting the point. What I'm trying to tell you is that you're not going to inherit anything. That I want the entire estate to go for the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that's why there's a young man at Westminster Seminary right now from Malawi who is getting some support from my parents-in-law's estate so that being dead, yet they are carrying on the gospel. Let us on this day of Thanksgiving be most thankful for Jesus and most determined to advance the cause of Christ. The psalmist gives us another way of thanking God in the words, I will call on the name of the Lord. You know, the Bible uses the term calling on the name of the Lord very frequently. We preachers, you know, we go to our resource material and we can find all the texts in the Bible where call on the name of the Lord. And there were many of them. I'm only going to give you a few. I'm going to begin with the text before us. A little earlier in this chapter, in verse 4, the psalmist already tells us what he means by calling on the name of the Lord. Then I called on the name of the Lord. O Lord, I pray, deliver my soul. You got it, didn't you? Calling on the name of the Lord, one of the ways is to pray because he said, I will call on the name of the Lord. And then he said, Oh, Lord, but he's praying. So apparently that's what he means. There's another text in Jeremiah, chapter 29, verse 12, that uses this term in a very similar way. Call on me and come and pray to me, says the prophet Jeremiah, speaking on behalf of God. You will seek me and you will find me if you seek me with all your heart. So one of the ways in which we call on the name of the Lord is in prayer. The Heidelberg Catechism, question and answer 116, says that prayer is the chief means of thanks that we bring to our God. The number one way in which we express our gratitude is by means of prayer. So don't you think Thanksgiving Day is a good time for you and me to review our prayer life? Do you really take time every day to commune with the Lord in prayer? I don't mean just pray before you begin eating your food, return thanks before we eat. Very fine practice. But a time, a special time that you set aside in which you commune with your God, a time of prayer. A time in which you tell him you love him. Yes, God looks into our hearts and he knows whether we love him or not. But I think he loves to hear it. We tell him in prayer. Thank him for a life that has meaning and significance beyond the routine of a normal day's activity. Thank him for his spirit to guide you and to be the kind of a person he wants you to be and really you want to be, don't you? Ask several today to say just a sentence prayer. I hope you fathers and mothers set good examples for prayer. You don't repeat the same three sentences every time you sit down to eat. But you acknowledge God's goodness. My father used to do that. He used to ask us each to make a sentence. Seven children around the table. Actually, it was a bench, a big old bench. and there were so many of us in a small kitchen in a two-bedroom apartment with nine people. That's the way I lived until I was about 14. There wasn't any room for anything. But my dad used to ask us something for which you are thankful. And sometimes he would simply ask one of the children to pray, to have the prayer. And I'll never forget the time he asked my little brother. He was only four years old. to pray. And he started praying. He thanked God for everything he could think of. He thanked God for all his brothers and sisters. We liked that. Most of his brothers and sisters were early teenage and later teenage years. And then he started thanking God for his bicycle and for his erector set. Something like Legos today, I guess. And for his little wagon. And we knew he was running out of things that he could remember because after a long gap, he then said, and thank you, Lord, for brooms to sweep the floor with. And that about broke up us, the rest of us. And we started laughing and he started crying. But you know, that little guy is now a retired pastor living in Indiana and he's serving a vacant church right now while they're looking for a preacher. Thank God for brooms to sweep the floor with. Well, that's quite a testimony that every blessing comes from God. But that isn't all that this calling on the name of the Lord means, and I must hurry along. I'm enjoying this so much. I hope I'm a blessing to you. It's been a while since I've had this privilege, and it's my fault because I've been asked. But I have a little ministry going, and Jerry Galloway helps me along with that at Champagne Village, some of you know. So I still have my own little congregation there. The second way in which we call upon the name of the Lord is in worship. Worship. That's in our passage as well. That's verses 17 to 19. Listen, I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people in the courts of the house of the Lord. So the second way in which we can call on the name of the Lord is to worship. Frequently in the Bible, the scripture speaks of solemn assemblies. There's a passage in Joel, for instance, Joel 1, verse 14, that says, Call a solemn assembly, summon the elders to the house of the Lord for your God and cry out to him. So calling on the name of the Lord not only refers to the practice of prayer, it also refers to the practice of worship. They who are really thankful are faithful in worship, are present with the gathered community of faith when we unitedly praise our God. Are you grateful for the privilege of worship? I wonder, I'm not so sure about this, but I wonder whether our presence, our frequency of our presence in worship is not a barometer of our thankfulness to God. the measure of how grateful we are for his goodness and his gospel. A kind of a temperature gauge for the sincerity of our faith. Now, I'm not suggesting that those who go to church more frequently and more faithfully than those who do not are better than others. None of us is better than anyone else of us. We are all objects of grace and not merit. We've got that straight, don't we? But having said that, I do believe, and I think there's biblical warrant for this, that those who are more faithful in worship are more blessed. Because you can't come under the preaching of the word, this faithful preaching of the word for which we should be so grateful from this pulpit without being blessed. Thanksgiving is a good time to review our loyalty in worship time. Praise Him in the middle of God's people. I was one of three sons, and all of us became preachers. For a while, I think we were the only three brother preachers in the old Christian Reformed Church directory of ministers. And I don't know about my brothers, but I was often asked, was my father a pastor? And he wasn't. He immigrated with his father 103 years ago as just a young man, a single man. Worked in a factory in Racine, Wisconsin. Well, why is it that all three of you became pastors? And you know, I struggled with that because I never remember my parents suggesting that I be a pastor. I never remember talking about my brother. After high school, I had to go off to service in World War II, and my brother John, three years younger than I, sort of caught up to me while I was gone. And when I came home, I came back from the South Pacific, I said, what are you going to do when you go to college? He said, I'm going to be a pastor. I said, you are? It's the first time I'd heard about it. And so I began to reflect about that. And then I realized that when something was going on in church, the Bergsma bench was full. we were there. And it was so obvious that the church and its ministry was of primary importance in my parents' lives. And it seemed to be a very natural thing to want to be part of the best of what was happening. And I'm not suggesting at all that you can't serve the Lord very faithfully in many other fields, and some more faithfully than those of us who are pastors, perhaps. But that kind of influence, that sense that this is God's work, and these are God's people, and we stand among them. But I must hurry on because there's still one more point, and the times are flying. So have you heard it? How do we thank God? By responding in faith to the salvation that God offers, number one. Secondly, by calling upon his name in prayer and worship. And now finally, the psalmist says, I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people. Vows, what are vows? Well, vows are sincerely accepted obligations. A vow is a solemn promise. we speak of marriage vows, don't we? Doris and I have been vowing for 64 years. And I, for one, am going to stay with it. And you can ask her what her intentions are. Okay, okay. A marriage vow, a solemn promise to love and be loyal in a relationship that only death can break. Profession of faith is a solemn vow. And we were privileged earlier this month to hear three professions of faith, weren't we? Christine Denboer, Nicholas House, Carl Russo, and last month there were others. They stood among us here and they vowed. They said, we stand with Christ and his people. And we vowed to assist them in keeping their vows. And they vowed to help us keep our solemn promises. We had baptism. And the parents vowed to raise that child in the fear of the Lord and in his admonition. Thankful people keep their vows. They do not take their solemn vows lightly. In the church we attend, while we're not present in Escondido area, they have what they call faith promise, and only for mission causes. Because the missionaries out there had better have a sense of support and security in what they're doing, because they're really at loose ends if they support flags. To make a vow that with God's help, so much a month this year is going to go to the cause of Christian mission. Faith promise is in that category. You know, it seems to me we don't make substantial vows like we should. You know, we lavish things upon ourselves, don't we? We're so extravagant when we want to build our homes and have life's necessities. But I want to encourage you to make vows that are lavish and extensive for Christ and his kingdom. I'm going to close with a parable. You'll all get the point. Any 10-year-old here, and maybe some bright ones who's younger, will get the point, too. It's a rabbinical parable. The rabbis, you know, like to tell stories. A parable is a fictitious story, isn't it? It's a made-up story with a great lesson implied. And I'm just going to tell you the story and let you draw your own conclusions, all right? It has to do, of course, with how to be thankful and how to make our vows. And to know where I'm going with it, it's a parable that reminds us that our tendency is to scale down our promises in support of God and his kingdom. The parable goes like this. There was a man who felt very thankful to God in the Old Testament times. You know, there were many sacrifices, three great feasts a year, but there were individual sacrifices that people could bring, sin offerings, trespass offerings, and a peace offering. A peace offering was a way of showing gratitude to God, and this man seemed very grateful, and so he was going to make a great vow, and he vowed to sacrifice an ox. Wow, that's a big sacrifice, isn't it? And he put a rope around the ox's neck and started on his way about 10 miles or so to the temple, to the high altar, but as he went along his way, he met a person with a sheep. Now, an ox is more valuable than a sheep. So he thought, hey, I'll sell my ox to this man, take his sheep in trade, and put the profits in my pocket because God is honored when you sacrifice a sheep as well, isn't he? And so he did and went on his way. But soon he met someone with a lamb. And he thought, well, you can bring a lamb too on the altar of the Lord. So why don't I sell this sheep and take the lamb in trade and put the profits in my pocket and go on my way. And you know where this is going now, don't you? Well, he led his lamb a little along the way and found someone with two doves. Now the Mosaic law says poor people who don't have flocks of their own aren't very wealthy. They can bring two turtle doves in sacrifice to the Lord. So he sold the lamb, took the turtle doves and paid, put the profits in his pocket and on his way. And he was almost in sight of the high altar when he met a man with a small bag of dates. And so he traded his doves. He sold his doves and took the dates in trade. And because after all, the law says you can bring the harvest of your field and your crops and the fruit of the trees to offering to the Lord too. He was only about 100 yards away, football field lengthened away from the high altar. When he got a little hungry, so he started eating the dates, and he put the pits in the bag. And by the time he arrived at the altar, that's all he had left. And he put the pits on the altar, a pocket full of money for himself, and a pittance for the Lord. Let us pray. Oh, Lord, our God, we pray that we make vows that demonstrate the genuineness of our faith, that we are faithful in calling upon your name in prayer and worship, and that we drink deeply of the cup of salvation which will nourish us spiritually unto eternal life. Grant us, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.