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Look at the Lord’s Thankful Heart
Matt 11:25-26, Matt 26:26-28, John 11:32-44
Sermon by Rick Crandall
Grayson Baptist Church - Nov. 20, 2011
*In 2009, Mary and I got to go to my 40th high school reunion.
One of the best parts of that trip back to Georgia was eating breakfast with Gary & Lisa.
They were my brother’s best friends in high school.
Gary has been through a lot of troubles over the years.
Thirteen years ago, he was thrown 60 feet in a motorcycle wreck.
Of course, Gary almost died.
He lost an eye, has one leg shorter than the other, and has been through 20 surgeries.
But at breakfast he said, “You can always look around and see someone else that’s had it a lot worse than you.”
*Gary has a great attitude.
-He is thankful for his loving wife of 38 years.
-Thankful for his 3 daughters and his 7 grandchildren.
-Thankful he can see.
-- Thankful he is learning to play the guitar.
-Thankful that although his mom was too sick with cancer to come to church for his baptism, she got to see it on TV.
The large church they attend never shows baptisms on TV, but that day, by the grace of God, they did.
*Gary is thankful for all of God’s blessings in his life, and his thankful heart is an inspiration to me.
You see, thanksgiving is a contagious thing.
And one of the best places we can catch it is from the Lord Himself.
*Jesus was thankful.
And He wants us to have a thankful heart like His.
-But what stirred the Lord to give thanks?
-- The Bible gives us at least 3 helpful examples.
1.
In Matthew 11, Jesus was thankful for the Heavenly Father’s revelation.
*In this chapter the Lord rebuked the cities where most of His mighty works had been done, because so many of those proud, hard-hearted people refused to repent.
But at the same time, Jesus was thankful for the Father’s revelation.
And we see this example of the Lord’s gratitude in Matt 11:25-26:
25.
At that time Jesus answered and said, "I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes.
26.
Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight.
*Jesus said, “I thank You, (or I praise You) Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes.”
*What we see here is God rejecting the proud, and revealing Himself to the humble hearted.
God rejects the proud.
The Father hides spiritual truth from those who are blinded by the pride of worldly wisdom.
*Listen to vs. 25&26 from the New Living Translation:
25.
Then Jesus prayed this prayer: "O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, thank you for hiding the truth from those who think themselves so wise and clever, and for revealing it to the childlike.
26.
Yes, Father, it pleased you to do it this way!
*William Barclay explained: “Here Jesus was speaking out of experience, the experience that the Rabbis and the wise men rejected him, and the simple people accepted him.
The intellectuals had no use for him; but the humble welcomed him.
*We must be careful to see clearly what Jesus meant here.
-He is not condemning intellectual power.
-What he is condemning is intellectual pride.
*As Plummer has it, ‘The heart, not the head, is the home of the gospel.’
-It is not (smartness) which shuts the gospel out; it is pride.
-It is not stupidity which allows the gospel in.
-- it is humility.”
(1)
*You could be the smartest, best educated person in the whole world.
-But if you will not open your heart to God in simple, child-like trust, you will never be saved.
*God rejects the proud.
But He reveals Himself to the humble hearted.
And Jesus was most thankful for the Father’s perfect wisdom in this matter.
*Aren’t you glad you don’t have to be the smartest person in Caldwell Parish to be saved!
Now you may be the smartest person in Caldwell Parish, but that won’t save you for a minute!
God hides spiritual truth from the proud, and He reveals Himself to the humble hearted.
This way, all the glory goes to God.
*Timothy Smith explained: -You are nothing without God!
-Think of it.
You cannot boast to God about your goodness.
-You don’t impress officials at NASA with a paper airplane.
-You don’t boast about your crayon sketches in the presence of Picasso.
-You don’t claim equality with Einstein because you can write H2O.
-And you can’t impress God by your success.
(2)
*But God has Good News for you today!
He loves you in spite of your ungodly, selfish, sinful ways.
Jesus Christ died on the cross to take the punishment for your sins.
And He rose again to give eternal, abundant life to all who will turn to Him in faith.
Jesus is calling out to you today to give up on yourself and put your hope in Him.
*God rejects the proud, but He reveals Himself to the humble hearted.
And Jesus was thankful for the Father’s revelation.
2. But He was also thankful for the Father’s resources.
*We see this example of the Lord’s gratitude in Matt 26:26-28.
-On the night before He died on the cross, Jesus shared His last supper with His disciples.
26.
And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed it and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, "Take, eat; this is My body.''
27.
Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you.
28.
For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.
*Jesus gave thanks for the bread and the wine.
He knew that these provisions came from our Heavenly Father.
All of our resources ultimately come from God.
There is no limit to the good things God can provide, because everything in the universe belongs to Him!
*Several years ago astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics found a white dwarf star in the constellation of Centaurus.
-This star has a diamond core that is 1,864 miles wide!
It weighs 2.27 thousand trillion trillion tons, and it measures 10 billion trillion trillion carats.
That’s a one followed by 34 zeroes!
(3)
*Talk about a big ring!
-God is more that able to provide everything we will ever need!
[1] But here we see that Jesus was thankful for even the smallest things.
It was just a little bread, just a little wine, but the Lord was thankful.
Jesus gave thanks for the smallest things.
*Robert Govoni explains that Jesus “gave thanks because He could see beyond the material to the spiritual.
He gave thanks because He could see beyond the bread and wine to the God Who provided them both.
To Jesus even the smallest morsel of food was not trivial.
All pointed back to its Maker and Giver.
*This is true not only for bread and wine, but every good thing that we might enjoy.
We see so many people today that put a separation between the material and the spiritual.
According to these people cars, bicycles, forks and knives, watermelon, steak, turkey, milk, vegetables, game boys, and computers are totally separate from religion, faith, prayer, God and worship.
*They say the only place religion belongs is in a church.
-They say there is no place for Christian faith in education, in government, in business, even in our personal lives.”
(4)
*But those people are wrong.
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