1. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. It does not have all the materialism, drunkenness, and strange hoopla attached to it that Christmas has.
2. Thanksgiving is a simple Christian holiday – we simply set aside one day to give thanks to God for His goodness to it.
3. I often wonder who atheists and other unbelievers give thanks to on Thanksgiving, to themselves?
4. William Bradford, the governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, wrote these words in 1623:
   
   "Inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as He spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience.
   
   Now I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and ye little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the daytime, on Thursday, November 29, in the year of our Lord, 1623, and the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on Ye Pilgrim Rock (Plymouth) there to listen to ye pastor and render thanksgiving to Almighty God for all His blessings."



5. George Washington gave his famous Thanksgiving Proclamation right here in NYC on October 3, 1789, assigning Thursday, November 26^th to be Thanksgiving Day. Please allow me to read part of it to you:
   
   "Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor: and
   
   Whereas, both houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me ‘to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peacefully to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.’"



6. In 1846, Mrs. Sarah Hale, an editor of a ladies’ magazine, began a campaign to have Thanksgiving Day established as a national holiday. Several states responded but it took President Abraham Lincoln to officially declare Thanksgiving Day a national holiday (18 years later).
7. President Lincoln appointed the last Thursday of November, 1864, as Thanksgiving Day, and the tradition has been firmly established. To this we can only add: THANK GOD!
8. The word "thanks" in one form or another is found some 140 times in the Bible. David used it more times than anyone else in the Bible, with the apostle Paul a close second.
9. Today I would like for us to look at David’s prayer of thanksgiving found here in I Chronicles 29.

1. DAVID’S PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING WAS TO GOD (29:10,11).

1. That sounds rather obvious, but consider this – most Americans prefer to leave God out of Thanksgiving. To them Thanksgiving means a four-day weekend, football games, and a turkey dinner. I am not knocking those things (especially the turkey dinner!), but beloved, this is not the real meaning of Thanksgiving.
2. The Bible says "David blessed the LORD" (29:10). To bless the LORD means to ascribe grateful praise to Him.
3. Praise was ascribed to God "for ever and ever" (29:10). We will be praising God for all eternity.
4. There are some similarities between David’s prayer of thanksgiving and the Lord’s Prayer (Model Prayer). Our Lord instructed His disciples to pray, "For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen" (Matt.6:13).
5. Also, David prayed: "Thine, O LORD, is the greatness, and the power, and the majesty…" (29:11; cf. Matt.6:13).
6. What this means is God is sovereign over heaven and earth. "Thine is the kingdom, O LORD, and Thou art exalted as head above all" (29:11b; cf. Matt.6:13). David recognized this. And we need to recognize this.
7. Let us stop here for a moment and take note of the context: David’s prayer followed his exhortation to the people to give for the building of the temple. They responded and so David "rejoiced with great joy" (29:9; cf. 1-8). Then he offered up this magnificent prayer of thanksgiving to God.

2. DAVID RECOGNIZED THAT ALL THINGS COME FROM GOD

1. "Both riches and honor come of Thee" (29:12).
2. Once a believer truly understands this, Christian stewardship is not a problem. David goes on to say in verse 14, "But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? for all things come of Thee, and of Thine own have we given Thee."
3. And then down in verse 16 we read, "all this store that we have prepared…cometh of Thine hand, and is all Thine own." If every member of Bible Baptist Church truly believed this, and understood this, and obeyed this, I don’t think we’d have any problem getting this building fixed up, supporting more missionaries, and so on.
4. When we pay our tithe, when we put in our faith promise, when we contribute to our building fund, we must always remember – "and of Thine own have we given Thee" (29:14).

3. DAVID RECOGNIZED THAT THE THINGS OF GOD ARE ALL THAT REALLY MATTERS

1. In verse 14, David asks, "But who am I, and what is my people?" In verse 15, he answers his question – "For we are strangers before Thee, and sojourners, as were our fathers…"
2. "Our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding" (29:15). Life is fleeting. 2003 will soon be over. Our days on earth will soon be over.
3. "Tis not a long life and ‘twill soon be past,
   Only what’s done for Christ will last."
4. These important principles – the brevity of life, the importance of serving God while there is still time, the judgment of God – are repeated over and over for us in the Word of God (cf. Ps.90:10-12; James 4:13-17).
5. And yet some Christians still do not get it. They run to and fro, immersed in worldly activities, not realizing that these things have no place in the kingdom of God.
6. And the kingdom of God is all that really matters. David prayed, "Thine is the kingdom, O LORD, and thou art exalted as head above all" (29:11). Our Lord taught His disciples to pray, "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven…For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen" (Matt.6:10,13).
7. David recognized that the things of God are all that really matters. And so he wanted to build a temple for God (29:16-19; cf. 17:1,2).
8. Do you have that same kind of zeal? Do you want to see this temple fixed up for the glory of God?
9. Even though David himself was not given the privilege of building it, his son Solomon was (22:7-11; 28:2-6).
10. But David did all he could to help in the preparation for building the temple (22:1-6). Why? David was a great soldier, a great king, a great poet and musician; David had everything money could buy. And David realized that the things of God are all that really matters.

CONCLUSION:

1. D.L. Moody used to tell a true story about a farmer who spent a long time kneeling at a soldier’s grave near Nashville, Tennessee.
2. Someone came to him and asked, "Why do you pay so much attention to this grave? Was your son buried here?"
3. The man said, "No. During the (Civil) war my family were all sick; I didn’t know how I could leave them but I was drafted. One of my neighbors came over and said to me, ‘I will go for you; I have no family.’
4. He went off and was wounded in the battle of Chickamauga. He was carried to the hospital and there he died. And sir, I have come a great many miles to pay tribute because HE DIED FOR ME."
5. This Thanksgiving, let us be thankful. And let us pay tribute to the Lord Jesus Christ because He died for us.