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Thanksgiving/Advent Intertwined

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Thanksgiving/Advent Intertwined

10 minuten leestijd Arcering uitzetten

On this year’s worship calendar, the commemoration of Thanksgiving in the United States (November 24) and the commencement of Advent (November 27), are separated by only three days. From a literal calendar perspective, Thanksgiving/Advent will never be closer.

The relationship between Thanksgiving and Advent is quite remarkable. Advent marks the beginning of the church’s festival calendar. The “January 1” of the church calendar is really the first Sunday of Advent. Our misery and depravity motivate our desperate need for Advent—for “the Coming One,” the Messiah, the Prince of peace. On the other hand, the “December 31” of the church’s worship calendar is Thanksgiving. The church’s special worship service commences with Advent; moves through Christmas, Passion, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost; and fittingly closes with Thanksgiving. Though Thanksgiving is not to be regarded technically as one of the church’s festivals in the historic Christ-centered sense that, for example, Easter and Ascension are to be regarded, its commemoration has nevertheless become a good, historic custom which, when properly understood, has no other center and ending point than Christ alone.

The “ending of Thanksgiving” and the “beginning of Advent” must be experientially realized in our hearts. Then we shall learn that these two are inseparable; yes, are intertwined. You’ve often heard that our Prayer days and Thanksgiving days must be intertwined in the praying and thanking High Priest. Similarly, our Thanksgiving days and Advent weeks must be intertwined in Him who is the essence, sum, and substance of both. For in all true thanksgiving there is an experiential longing to relish and taste more of the advent Christ. And in all true advent experience, there is humble thanksgiving for a Savior which the lost sinner is not yet able to embrace as he desires.

Paul commands the Thessalonians, “In every thing give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (1 Thes. 5:18).

Thanksgiving is the gift of God, the work of God. True thanksgiving springs from free, sovereign grace.

Today, too many prayers contain more Pharisaical-thanking than publican-petitioning. We too often thank without thanking, pray without praying, and petition our needs without needing them.

True thanksgiving thanks God for prosperity and adversity. This is impossible by nature. Sometimes people say, “It’s easy to be thankful in prosperity.” But that is not true. To be “thank-full” means to be “full of thanks.” It means to overflow with grateful returns to God.

To be thankful in prosperity means to have a humble, Spirit-wrought realization that everything I have received of the Lord in His favor is more than what I have deserved. Only a broken heart and a contrite spirit, acutely aware of its deadness and misery, may receive true thankfulness in prosperity.

Have you been “full-of-thanks” for all that you have received from the Lord in 1988? Do we not rather assume to ourselves the Lord’s benefits as rights rather than as graces as long as we are not convinced of sin, righteousness, and judgment?

My friend, please do not be so quick to say that it is easier to be thankful in prosperity than adversity. True thankfulness always realizes that the soul cannot offer proper returns to God. It always realizes that it must come to an end of self-manufactured thanksgivings, and end only in the perfect thanking High Priest, Jesus Christ, who alone can take the poor prayers and thanksgivings of His people, salt them with the sanctifying salt of His own sufferings and intercessions, and present them through Himself without spot or wrinkle before His heavenly Father’s countenance.

“In every thing” received, “give thanks.” But also in every thing removed. In every loss and sorrow. Paul excludes nothing: “In every thing give thanks.” Yes, but also in affliction? Yes, child of God, also for the afflictions encountered between Prayer Day and Thanksgiving Day, 1988.

For the unbearable-yet-borne cross-providences…

For the impossible-yet-possible tasks…

For the lonely-yet-not-lonely “absences” of God…

For the tolerable-yet-intolerable warfare against sin…

For the frequent-yet-not-frequent-enough sighs, “O wretched man that lam…”

For the agonizings-yet-rejectings to lose self…

For the groaning, wrestling prayers to bow before, under, and “in with” the will of God…

For these things — give thanks?

Yes, dear believer, for every thing. Every is not my word, but the Holy Spirit’s. I cannot understand it either. Yet I know it is true. I feel its power from time to time. Every thing.

But when, do you ask?

When we learn through agonizing affliction these lessons from the Spirit:

• that all things work together for good to them that love God, to the called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28);

• humiliation: I led thee in the wilderness to humble thee, to prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end (Dt. 8:2);

• to live, as the Reformers would say, in coram Deo (in the face of God), i.e., conscious of God’s presence, will, and Word;

• to conform us to Christ by making us partakers of His suffering through suffering;

• to grow in the art of learning to walk by faith and not by sight;

• to wean us from the world, so that the world may become, as Watson has said, “like a loose tooth, which being easily twitched away, does not much bother us”; and

• to look beyond time to eternity: “Lord, make me to know mine end,” thereby teaching us as John Trapp said, “He that rides to be crowned need not fear a rainy day.”

Dear child of God, have there not been times in 1988 when you have prayed in the spirit of humble thanksgiving from the fiery furnace of affliction? Times when you have prayed:

“Dear Lord, through affliction Thou wilt teach us greater dependence upon Thee. Through affliction Thou wilt wean us from the world so that we may not, as Paul says, be condemned with the world. Through affliction Thou doth teach us our human frailty, the sinfulness of our sins, and the vastness of our guilt. Through affliction Thou doth expose us to our lack of trust in Thee, and to our tragic unbelief. Through affliction Thou doth purge within us the fever of sin, for Thou doth use affliction medicinally as a refining fire to take off the rust of Thy spiritual graces within us. Through affliction Thou doth both discipline and disciple us by trying our faith, by quickening our hearts in prayer, and by unfolding for us Thy fatherliness in all our chastisements. Through affliction Thou doth teach us that true submission is a gift of sovereign grace alone. Dear Lord, it has been good for us to have been afflicted; we humbly thank Thee for affliction.”

Now, please be honest with yourself, child of God. Are not these humbling graces more often reality when you are under affliction than when you are not?

Let me then ask you this: “Why? Is it because you respond so well to affliction and have strength in yourself to bear so much?”

No. You know very well that apart from the grace of God your reaction to affliction would simply be—rebellion.

But though you rebelled far too often this past year, did not the Holy Spirit use even that rebellion as an affliction, and thereby use every thing to bring you to think lower thoughts of yourself and higher thoughts of God in Christ? Didn’t Christ appreciate in value for you in 1988, and did not you depreciate—especially under affliction?

And is not anything that causes Christ to increase and you to decrease worth the price — yes, are not all things causes of “thanks-giving”?

This is the mystery of the gospel. In Christ, the bitterness of affliction reaps the giving of thanks.

Only the work of the Holy Spirit can accomplish this in rebellious hearts like yours and mine.

Oh, my dear believer, pause and consider a moment. Be still and know that God is God. Put your hand upon your mouth. The Lord’s rod is His hand of love toward you. His chastening is your badge of sonship (Heb. 12). Be not overly discouraged by the afflictions you still carry with you. They serve the same purpose — to make you partakers of Christ’s holiness and righteousness (Heb. 12:10–11).

In the quietness of submission shall be your strength.

Ask God for a worshipful “selah.” The “selah,” the pause of rest in Him.

The result will then be:

• the confession: “It has been good for me to have been afflicted”;

• the submission of faith which acknowledges that every thing is from the Lord (“It is the Lord,” 1 Sam. 3:18), which justifies the Lord for all that He does (“We indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds,” Lk. 23:41), which approves of the Lord for doing all that He has done (“Blessed be the Name of the Lord,” Job 1:21), and which clings to the Lord no matter what He shall do (“Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him,” Job 13:15);

• peace that passes understanding (Phil. 4:7);

• thanksgiving: “for every thing.”

Yet, thanks only in Christ. Only in Him who appears in justice, so that God can look upon you without being a consuming fire and an everlasting burning.

Without Christ, there can be no Thanksgiving. But in Christ, Thanks-giving and Advent are intertwined. For in true thanks, Christ is always the substance, always the Coming One to work thanks, always the All-in-all.

You see, the church calendar year really has no beginning and no ending except in Christ. He is the Alpha and Omega.

Your experience, dear child of God, is cyclical. Misery, deliverance, and gratitude —over and over again. There is no abrupt ending with Thanksgiving and no sharp beginning with Advent. The whole Christian calendar is cyclical, Christological, experiential. There is ebb and flow to God’s church calendar in Christ Jesus. The ebbing of a “missinglonged-for” Christ; the flowing of an “embraced-to-be-thanked” Christ.

How poor we are if we miss all true thanksgiving and advent! If we have never become a lost, cut-off, death- and hell-worthy sinner in the presence of God as holy Judge, we are still missing the consciousness of advent and thanksgiving “in Christ Jesus.” For what is thanksgiving but “thanks be unto God for His unspeakable Gift?” And what is Advent but “Give me Jesus, else I die”?

Life is empty, vanity of vanities, without Christ. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (Jn. 3:36).

“Abideth”—terribly, tragically, eternally—on him. How solemn! How decisive! How agonizing shall be the unmixed and undiluted wrath of God!

Seek the Lord in the face of His dear Son this Thanksgiving season, this Advent season, while “He may be found. Call ye upon Him while He is near” (Is. 55:6).

I wish you this Thanksgiving season, Advent; and this Advent season, Thanksgiving—intertwined.

Dr. J.R. Beeke is pastor of the First Netherlands Reformed Congregation of Grand Rapids, Michigan.


It’s hard for a man on his knees to stumble.


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Bekijk de hele uitgave van dinsdag 1 november 1988

The Banner of Truth | 30 Pagina's

Thanksgiving/Advent Intertwined

Bekijk de hele uitgave van dinsdag 1 november 1988

The Banner of Truth | 30 Pagina's