OFFERING OF THANKSGIVING UNTO GOD

To offer thanksgiving to the Lord from a legalistic viewpoint is abominable to the Lord. A person who practices legalism is willing to give something to the Lord, but . . . with the purpose of receiving more in return. He demands high wages for all his efforts. He who sacrifices in such a way only seeks himself in his sacrificing and not the Lord. Was there not a great difference between the offering of Cain and that of Abel. In Hebrews 11 we read, “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.” Abel did not offer to merit anything from God, but he offered in gratitude, because he desired to honor God thereby on account of the grace given him for the sake of Christ. Abel did not seek his justification before God in the bringing of his sacrifice, but he sought his justification before God in the work of the promised Messiah. Therefore the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering. But because Cain offered from an entirely different principle, therefore God had no respect unto him and to his offering. Gen. 4:4 and 5.

The obligation of thanksgiving, to which the words of our text calls us, can never take place outside of the partaking of faith in Christ as the God-given Mediator and High Priest. The Lord teaches His favorites to know this experimentally. By passing through grievous ways, He teaches them to find death in all their works and to write death upon all things belonging to themselves. Besides, He teaches them through the Gospel to seek all things, outside themselves, in Him in Whom the Father has all His delight. He teaches them to glory in nothing save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is a school wherein a person in this life will have never done learning. Flesh and blood will not accept this instruction, but, thanks be unto God, the Lord Himself will see to it that in this way He will arrive to His honor and thereby bring His people to salvation.

Author Unknown

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