Thankfulness

A sermon (No. 1469) delivered on Lord’s-Day morning, April 20th, 1879, by C. H. Spurgeon
At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

“In every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.”—Philippians 4:6.

I doubt that thankfulness is the first thing most conservative Christians feel these days when they reflect on American culture. There are some good reasons for that! I get it. Much is changing. Much more has already changed but is now becoming evident in more ways.

Many of the changes we’re seeing have to do with aspects of life we’re deeply sensitive about—like sexual ethics, marriage, and family. Visceral reactions are, if unhelpful, at least understandable.

There’s a lot of outrage and fear.

During my time as a student at Faith Baptist Theological Seminary, I learned that there was an old youth pastors’ joke, built on a misuse of Heb. 11:6. The verse states:

But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

Read Part 1.

In our quest to make Thanksgiving real, we left off by thinking about ways to ground our Thanksgiving in Scripture, following the example of the very Pilgrims who left this treasure as a heritage to our entire nation. The next challenge I would offer is to ground our Thanksgiving in history—primarily the history of these same Pilgrims.

In these strange new “perilous times” (2 Tim. 3:1), it takes an awful lot to shock us. An unexpected trend has emerged, however, that is so unthinkably disturbing that we hate to even fathom it. It involves pushing a random stranger down onto subway tracks, or even in front of an oncoming train.

If more evidence were needed for the depraved nature of man, I am not sure where it could come from. But this is not mere depravity—it is a form of debauchery and degradation that only occurs in the final stages of cultural descent.