Pastor Slaughter
Pentecost 18
October 9, 2022
Genesis 8:15-22
Cycle of Gratitude
1)See God’s Blessings
2)Respond with Thanks
What are the times in your life that you are most grateful? Isn’t usually the times where it is easy for you to see God’s blessings in life? When you are blessed financially, it’s easier to be thankful. It’s easier to be grateful during those big, monumental moments in life: the marriage to your spouse, the blessing of children, becoming grandparents. When we can see God’s blessings in our life, it is a lot easier to respond with gratitude, right?
Can we be grateful even during difficult times? I read a sermon illustration that tugged at my heartstrings. It was about a 2 year old boy named David who had cancer. His mother took him to a specialist who news was devastating: “He has a 50-50 chance.” When he was three, David had to have a spinal tap which is a painful procedure at any age. It was explained to him that because he was sick, the doctor had to do something to make him better. His mother told him “If it hurts, remember it’s because he loves you.” The procedure was horrendous. It took three nurses to hold David still, while he yelled and sobbed and struggled. When it was almost over, the tiny boy, soaked in the sweat and tears, looked up at the doctor and gasped “Thank you Doctor, for my hearting.”
What would you have said? A bunch of words that we should not repeat? Would you be able to have seen the blessing hidden behind the pain like David and have been able to respond with gratitude and say thank you? Or would’ve the pain kept you from seeing the blessing of making you better?
Gratitude is almost like a cycle where God blesses us, we respond with gratitude, and then he restarts the cycle all over again of blessing us. But the thing is that we have to recognize God’s blessings, so that we can respond with gratitude. Like the boy who even though went through a tremendous amount of pain he recognized the blessing and could respond with thanks. So we are going to look at the Cycle of gratitude, see God’s blessings, respond with thanks.
I wonder what it would have been like to be Noah. Genesis 6:5 describes the scenes, “The LORD saw that the wickedness of mankind was great on the earth, and that all the thoughts and plans they formed in their hearts were only evil every day.” So the LORD said in verses 7-8, “I will wipe out mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth, along with the animals, the creeping things, and the birds of the sky, because I regret that I have made them….But Noah found favor in the eye of the Lord.”
The Lord instructed Noah to build and ark. After it was done the Lord said to Noah “Come into the ark, you and your entire household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation.” Noah and his family entered the ark along with the animals and the Lord shut the door. And God’s judgment and mercy came. The rain came. The skies opened. The ground gushed with water. The whole earth drowning in these torrential rains. Water didn’t just cover the top of houses it was covering the tops mountains! What devastation! The animals, the people…they all perished.
Can you imagine being Noah and his family. Bobbing up and down. Waves hitting the side of the boat. If you were on the ark, would you be terrified about what is going on outside? I mean really think about what it would be like if you Noah. Noah and his family that were on the ark, didn’t just lose one family member but all of them. They didn’t lose just one neighbor but everyone. Their home was destroyed, everyone they knew gone. Their entire lives were uprooted and gone Would you have been thankful for what just happened? Would you be grateful? Noah and his family were on the ark for 1 year and 10 days and now their entire lives where uprooted and changed. Would you have been grateful? Would you have been able to see God’s blessing?
After a year and 10 days, just like God commanded them to go into the ark, he now commands them to go out. He said to Noah, “Go out of the ark—you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing of every sorts that tis with you, all flesh, including birds, livestock’s and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, so that they may swarm over the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.” We see God’s mercy during/after his judgement. Noah and his family and all the animals survived just as God had promised! God gave them his blessings!
As you take your first step off the ark what would you do? Survey the landscape? Run around and shout for joy? Or would you complain that things are different or cry in pain? You might expect Noah to do those things but instead this is what Noah does, “Noah built an altar to the LORD and took from every clean animal and every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.” What does Noah do? He is worshiping the Lord and giving him thanks! The Lord just poured out his blessings on Noah and his family preserving them, protecting them. He trusted that what God did was just and right! And he is thanking God for his mercy in saving him. The cycle of gratitude begins with God blessing us!
We know what gratitude looks like, don’t we? Your little child asks you for a cookie, “Mom can I please have a cookie?” And you respond, “Sure honey, here you go!” And your little child with a big grin on their face excitedly responds, “Thank you mommy!” But we also know what it looks like to not be grateful. After you child got the first cookie they say, “Momma can I have please had another cookie?!” “No sweetie, one is enough” Then the pouty face comes and the thankfulness and gratitude in having the first cookie (the first blessing) is gone. Why? Because we think we deserve that second one? Because we focus on what we don’t have instead of what God has blessed us with?
When are those times that I am not grateful? Isn’t usually when I am thinking I am deserving more from God? That God owes me something. Isn’t it when I take my eye off of the blessings God has given to me and look at the way in which God blessed someone else and think “Why doesn’t God bless me in that way?” Or maybe you can’t see God’s blessings because of the circumstances you are faced with or things you have endured. “Lord I have this affliction in my life. Lord I have my struggles and hurts.” When we don’t see God’s blessing what then is the conclusion, “Lord, you don’t care about me”? And don’t we find ourselves becoming bitter and angry to God. And living a life of resentment about what we don’t have instead of living a life of gratitude for the blessings we do have, that makes life miserable. When we live our lives forgetting God’s blessings, and thinking we deserve something from God, are we any better than those people during Noah’s time that God brought his judgment on by way of the flood?
In a sense isn’t it like we are Noah on the ark? Totally depended on God’s mercy. We deserve to be destroyed by the food waters but instead he saved by the water connected to the word. 1 Peter 4:20b-21 “In this ark a few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water. And corresponding to that, baptism now saves you— not the removal of dirt form the body but the guarantee of a good conscience before God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” God has saved us! He has given to us the greatest blessings. That our sins are washed away. That dirt of our ungratefulness is gone. We stand before God cleansed forgiven and we have the eternal blessings of heaven to look forward to. We have something to be grateful for!
God has richly given to us blessings, so what is our response? Noah built and altar and offered a burnt offering where the entire sacrifice was burned up symbolizing complete dedication to God. We don’t have to offer burnt offerings of animals to express our gratitude. We have something better… ourselves. Everything we are, everything we do, everything we have to giving thanks to God. Paul says that in Romans 12 “Therefore I urge you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifices—holy and pleasing to God—which is your appropriate worship.”
And guess what? When we come and worship him, when we help our neighbor, when we offer our time, our treasures, when we just live our lives remembering the mercies of God, it is like pleasant aroma that goes to the Lord. He is pleased with it. And guess what? The Lord responds with even more blessings. When Noah offered his sacrifice God said in his heart, “I will never again curse the soil anymore because of man, for the thoughts he forms in his heart are evil form his youth. Neither will I ever again strike every living think, as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. The Lord made a promise and gave his blessing that even though the hearts of man are evil form youth, he is not going to destroy it with a flood again. Instead, as long as the earth remains there will be the cycle of seasons. The Lord responded with another blessing and continues the cycle of gratitude. The Lord blessed Noah and saved him through the ark. Noah responds with gratitude and the Lord continues the cycle by providing blessings.
My family in Christ, how cool is it that we have a God who heaps one blessing on top of another? Whenever it is difficult to see the blessings, like the boy who had leukemia who endured pain, I challenge you to find 2 ways that God has blessed you and say thank you Lord because even in the most difficult times, even when the flood waters are rising all round us the Lord has richly and abundantly blessed us. When we see those blessings, we can respond with gratitude to God and then the cycle continues!