Bible Commentaries

THANKSGIVING

‘I will praise Thy Name.’

Isaiah 25:1

Isaiah lived in sad and degenerate times, but he was yet a man of praiseful spirit and hopeful outlook. Isaiah was personally of hopeful spirit because he could sing, ‘O Lord, Thou art my God,’ and as regarded Israel his faith in the covenant mercies of Jehovah, which would surely fulfil themselves in the long reach of the centuries, fortified him against temporary despondency. Isaiah was moved to praise as he looked backward and recalled that the Lord had already ‘done wonderful things,’ that His ‘counsels of old’ had been faithfulness and truth, and then he worked away from the past tenses into the future tenses of religious experience, anticipating the fulfilment of the Messianic promises when God would make unto all people ‘a feast of fat things,’ would ‘swallow up death in victory,’ and would ‘wipe away tears from off all faces.’ Looking both backward and forward, therefore, there appeared abundant reason for praising the Lord.

I. Thanksgiving is properly the key-note of the redeemed life.—It is always a ‘good thing to give thanks unto the Lord.’ Praise is comely for the upright. There is no song in the life of sin. Scepticism has no hymnology.

Let those refuse to sing

Who never knew our God:

But children of the Heavenly King

May sound His praise abroad.

II. The temper of thanksgiving is not to be limited to one time or to a single set of circumstances.—‘Thanksgiving Day’ should be every day. The spirit of praise should run through the whole of life. Like the sunshine, it should bathe all things in glory.

The Christian life is a continual ‘feast of fat things.’ Life’s blessings are more than its burdens. All these gifts come in the way of undeserved mercy. Whittier sings:

O favours every year made new!

O gifts with rain and sunshine sent!

The bounty overruns our due,

The fullness shames our discontent.

III. It should never be the case that complaints reach the Lord quicker than acknowledgments of His mercy.—It is a shame to receive of God without sending back any answering psalm of praise. Let the redeemed of the Lord praise Him. The Lord is worthy to be praised, and thanksgiving will render the blessings now in hand all the sweeter, while it will make the coming of further bounties in the future all the surer.