Thanksgiving is this week, so I am going to talk about gratitude and Thanksgiving today. Therefore, we will take a break from 2 Kings. We will actually pick it up in January, and we will continue going through 2 Kings. Today, we will think about thankfulness, gratitude, and the big idea for today is that gratitude increases joy. Gratitude to God increases joy. So if you will turn to Psalm 136, we will get there in just a second. We are going to look at a number of Psalms this morning, because the Psalms are just filled with thankfulness to God. So we are going to be thinking about gratitude, thankfulness, and what I want you to see and think about first is how much of our lives is influenced by what we look at, by what we look at physically and by what we look at with our mind's eye, where we fix our eyes. If you stare at your phone all day, your brain gets shaped by hot takes and outrage. If you constantly stare at your bank account, your retirement account, your investments, your heart rises and falls with numbers on a screen. If you stare at your pain all day, if you stare at your suffering all day, your world just ends up shrinking down into your own suffering. So in a normal week, I would ask, what are your eyes fixed on? It is a huge question. Because what we look at, again with our physical eyes and with our mind's eye, what we look at shapes what we love, what we hate, and the decisions we make. And this brings us to gratitude. Because biblical gratitude is this, and I will talk more about it in a second, but it is faith intentionally looking to God's grace and then responding to God's grace with thanks. Gratitude, thankfulness is this: saying, in everything that is going on in my life, good, hard, confusing, whatever, in everything, I am going to deliberately look at what God has done for me in Jesus Christ, and I am going to give thanks. That is what gratitude is. And this is not just a nice add-on. Gratitude, thankfulness is central to the Christian life. These are some typical Bible verses that discuss giving thanks. We have a slide displaying them. One of them is from Colossians 2. I will quickly go through these so that you can see them. There are many such verses, but I want you to observe a few of them. Colossians 2:6-7 states, "Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving." This passage discusses living your life after receiving Christ as your Lord, being rooted and built up in him, in union with him, and established in the faith. Then Paul summarizes this by saying that the Christian's life should be one that abounds in thanksgiving. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 contains a simple command: "Give thanks in all circumstances." It continues, "For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." Therefore, gratitude and being thankful are part of God's will for his people. It is one aspect of his will for our lives. Thus, gratitude is central to the Christian life. Here is where we are heading this morning. First, I will discuss what gratitude is. I believe this is very helpful. What is gratitude? Second, I will explain why we should be grateful to God. Third, and most importantly, I will discuss how gratitude increases joy. First, what is gratitude? We have a slide on this topic. This is my definition: Biblical gratitude is faith that intentionally sees God's grace and responds to this grace with thanks. I want to elaborate on this. It is faith that intentionally sees God's grace in your life and then responds to this grace with thanks. Here's what I mean. It means looking around at your life and seeing God's goodness, His grace, which is undeserved favor. So anything in our lives that we look at where we see God's grace, we look for those things; we are on the lookout for God's grace, and we see it. Then we respond to that with thanks to God. That is what biblical gratitude is. So this is Psalm 136, verse 1. Look at Psalm 136, verse 1. You can just keep the definition up there, everyone. Psalm 136, verse 1 is the psalm that talks about His steadfast love enduring forever. You can see it every single time through this psalm. At the end of every verse, the psalmist says, "His steadfast love endures forever." Much of it is thanks. So we are just looking at the first verse. It says, "Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever." So this is gratitude; this is gratitude, giving thanks to God. And notice, it is a response. It is "give thanks to God for." There is a reason we are giving thanks. So the giving of thanks is a response to something. In this verse, why are we told to give thanks to God? For He is good. He is good, and His steadfast love endures forever. So the question is, how do we know God is good? We know God is good through faith. The Bible says that God is good. How do we know that God's love endures forever? Because the Bible says that to His people, God's love is always enduring; it is steadfast. So we know that from the Bible, and we believe it by faith. Faith is simply believing God. That is all it is. He says it, and we believe it. So faith is believing God. So with eyes of faith, we understand that God is good, that the Lord is good. We are looking for grace in our lives, and this is one aspect of God's grace: understanding that the Lord is good, that His steadfast love endures forever. So we see God's grace in this aspect of our lives, and our response to this grace is to give thanks to Him. Biblical gratitude is faith intentionally seeing God's grace and responding to this grace with thanks. That is exactly what the psalmist is saying to do. See God's goodness and love and then respond to it with thanks. In this verse, what the psalmist is doing is intentionally seeing God's grace in the form of God's love. Then the psalmist is responding to that with thanks, being grateful. I will say this about gratitude: emotions should be involved in gratitude; they should, but it does not begin with emotions. The joy that we have should result when we understand about God's love for us, but it does not begin with emotions. It begins with faith, faith intentionally seeing God's grace in his life and then responding to this with thanks. So again, this is gratitude. Turn with me to Psalm 75, so flip over to the left a little bit to Psalm 75. Again, we are just thinking about what is gratitude. Psalm 75, verse one, here it is again. These are all over the Psalms about thankfulness. Psalm 75, verse one: "We give thanks to you, O God; we give thanks, and here's the why, right? There's a response. Why do we give thanks? For your name is near. Why else do we give thanks? We recount your wondrous deeds." So the psalmist is saying we are looking around for God's grace, and where do we see it? We see it because his name is near. That means he is near. He is near, and we are using our minds to remember his deeds, to recount his deeds. So we think about God's work in Scripture, what he has done in the Bible. We recount those deeds, and we also recount God's gracious deeds in our own lives. So we have eyes of faith to think about how God has worked in history and in our own lives. We see God's grace in that, and then we respond to that by giving thanks. Okay, so again, this is biblical gratitude. It is having eyes to see God's grace and then responding to that by faith, by seeing his deeds and then responding to that with gratitude. So that is number one. What is biblical gratitude? Number two is this. Why should we be grateful to God? It is very simple. Everything good in my life is a gift from God. Everything. A gracious gift. Grace is undeserved favor. Everything good is an act of grace from God. It is a gift. We have a slide on it; I have just two verses. James 1:17, a simple phrase but so profound. Everything good in our lives is a gift from the Father above. Everything, no exceptions. 1 Corinthians 4:7, I love this, what Paul says. He asks a question, "You have something, and he says, 'What do you have that you did not receive?'" So our tendency is to say, "I will work for this; this is mine." And Paul says, "No, what do you have that you did not receive? Everything you have, you have received it from God. And then he says, 'If you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?'" So a follower of Jesus Christ understands again that everything good in my life is a gift from the Lord. This is his grace. And this applies not just to God's people; God's common grace goes to all people. The Bible talks about the rain falling on the just and the unjust. God pours out his common grace on all people. But he pours out his salvific grace, his saving grace, on his own people. But everything good that anybody has is a gift from the Lord. And that is why we should have hearts of gratitude. That is why we should be grateful to God. The opposite of this is a sense of entitlement. And this is to me; this is the hallmark of our culture, a sense of entitlement. "I deserve this. I am entitled to this. I have a right to this." Folks will talk about rights speech or rights talk. "I have a right. I have a right to this. I have a right for you to give me this." This is so huge in our culture. It is so common, this belief that everybody has a right. "I am entitled to something." But the Christian says that everything good in my life is a gift from God. Everything is from God. Even this, even if I have worked for something, right? If I have worked for something, it is still a gift because where do my abilities come from? They come from God. Where does my very desire to work come from? There are some people who do not have a desire to work. If you have a desire to work, then that comes from God, right? It is all a gift. So again, a Christian understands that everything is a gift from the Lord. Whatever abilities I have, whatever opportunities I have, everything is a blessing in my life as a gift from God. And when that conviction really sinks in, the result is a heart of gratitude, of thankfulness, not entitlement. So this is why we should be grateful because everything we have is a gift. So gratitude is not an option for the Christian. Gratitude is essential. If we want to grow into the type of people that God wants us to be, then we must be grateful people because gratitude is one of the main tools that the Holy Spirit uses to grow us. Okay, so that is number two. Why should we be grateful? Number three, this is what I am going to spend the bulk of the sermon on, is this. Gratitude increases joy. Gratitude does a number of things. It brings glory to the Lord. It fights anxiety. It does a bunch of things in our lives. But the one I want to focus on today is how gratitude increases joy. Why am I saying that gratitude increases joy? Gratitude increases joy because it forces you to notice grace in your life that you were blind to. Gratitude forces you to notice God's grace. Turn with me to Psalm 100. Turn to the right, Psalm 100; it is a short psalm, it is great to memorize, it is only five verses. And in this psalm, I want us to notice the connection of gratitude and joy, okay? Psalm 100, starting at verse one. Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth; make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness; come into his presence with singing. Know that the Lord, he is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him, bless his name. For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations. So one theme of this psalm is joy. Verse one says, "Make a joyful noise." Verse two says, "Serve the Lord with gladness." So joy is there. Another theme is gratitude. Verse four says, "Enter his gates with thanksgiving." Give thanks to him. And again, how do we do this? How do we do this? By having eyes to see God's grace in our lives. And this is done by faith. We see God's grace in this psalm. And notice the grace here in Psalm 100. None of this, none of this is awesome; none of this is dependent on your circumstances. If you are a believer, this aspect of God's grace is for you no matter what you are going through. Look at verse three. This is God's grace, and it is always true. The Lord is God. He made us. We are his. We are his people. We are the sheep of his pasture. We have eyes to see this grace by faith, and this is always true for us. So we have eyes to see that the Lord is God, that he made us, he made me, he made you, we are his, I belong to him, we belong to him. We are his people; we are the sheep of his pasture. In Psalm 23, Jesus is the great shepherd. So we have eyes to see all these things by faith. We see this grace that is always present with the believer. So I have eyes to see, and then in response, I give thanks to him. I am grateful; I have gratitude. And this leads to joy. So we want to focus on God's grace in our lives and respond to that with gratitude. And this applies as well to the people in our lives. I want to talk about this for a significant amount of time because in verse five, it speaks about God's goodness and love. And one of the ways that God shows goodness and love to His people is through other people in our lives. That is one of the significant ways that God shows grace to us, by the people He brings into our lives. And Paul is going to talk about that. We will look at one verse, but I want you to think about this. Our tendency is to focus our minds on people who have wronged us. Our tendency is to focus our minds and think about people who are critical, people who are mean. This is usually what we do in our free time. Normally, if our mind is just drifting somewhere and we are thinking about some person, many times we are thinking about the people who have done us wrong, or gotten on our nerves, or something similar. If you do something and you receive ten compliments and one criticism, what do you think about? Probably what you think about the most is the criticism. If you are doing some mindless task, as I said, who typically do you think about while you are driving in your car? Often, we will think about the people who are doing us wrong, doing our family wrong, getting on our nerves, doing something to us that we do not like, right? That is where our mind usually goes. Do we think about, when our mind just wanders, do we think about people who are a blessing to us automatically? I hope sometimes you do. I hope your mind goes to God's grace in your life through people who are a blessing to you. But I am guessing that most of the time it will go to people who get on your nerves, who have done something wrong. That is where most of us go, to the people who have made us angry specifically. And there is a reason for this. It is because anger and outrage get our attention. They feel immediate. News programs understand this. Politicians understand this. Social media users understand this. Anger gets your attention. If you see two social media posts, and one says, "Here is something beautiful and encouraging," and another post says, "Look at this horrible thing these people are doing," what are you probably going to click on? You are probably going to click on the one that makes you mad. It feels more urgent. So this is the way we act in our own lives. Naturally, we tend to spend a lot of time thinking about things that make us angry. We do the same thing with people. We tend to let our minds drift to things and people that make us angry. You probably give a lot of mental energy to people who have hurt you, done you wrong, or made you angry. Narcissists understand this. Narcissists are highly critical, and one of the reasons they are so critical is to get you thinking about them, to make you give your mental energy to them. But think about it: there are also people in your life who are kind and encouraging. They are gracious gifts from God. When you are doing some mindless task, as I said, how much mental energy do you spend thinking about the wonderful people in your life, thanking God for them, and praying for them? Probably not enough. That would be my guess. Remember, biblical gratitude is faith that intentionally sees God's grace and responds to that grace with thanks. I am going to ask you to try to do this with the people in your life. Instead of thinking about people who make you angry or have done you harm or anything like that, train your mind to look for God's grace in the people in your life who are encouraging to you, who love you. Spend time thinking about them and how they are gracious gifts from God. Have eyes to see those people in your mind's eye. Then respond to God's grace in gratitude. This is what the Apostle Paul would do. We have a slide on it in Philippians 1. Listen to the way Paul talks. Notice the gratitude and the thankfulness; he remembers these people, and there is joy involved. Look at this: Philippians 1:3-4. Paul says, "I thank my God every time I remember you." His mind goes to people who are encouraging and loving to him. He says, "In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy." He has eyes to see God's grace in his life for people who love him and encourage him. Then he responds with thankfulness, and the result is joy. "I always pray with joy." So gratitude increases joy. While preparing for this sermon, I have been doing this. I have been conscious of it because I realize I am very bad about this. The sermon has helped me. If it does not help anybody else, it helps me because I am bad about this. I spend a lot of energy thinking about people who are doing foolish things or harmful things or whatever. I just do that. And in preparing for this sermon, what I have started doing is being intentional. Instead of focusing on people who are critical, I have started thinking about people in my life who are encouraging and loving. They are gracious gifts from God. They care about me and my family. They care about this church. There are a lot of people in this room right now who are encouraging and loving to me. They are gracious gifts from God. So I am starting to think about those people. I picture them in my mind's eye. I am on the lookout for them in my mind. Then I respond to that grace by thanking God for them, and I pray for them. And you know what the result is? I am more joyful. I have been more joyful this week because I have been practicing this, and I am not giving mental energy to critical people or narcissists or mean, hurtful people. Try this. Try this. This is what God wants for His people. He wants us to be abounding in thanksgiving, right? Try this, and you will see how God grows your joy. The thing is, joy is impossible if you are blind to 90% of the mercies in your life. Joy is simply impossible. But when you thank God, you train your mind to scan for grace instead of grievances, and your joy grows. Your joy grows, not because life suddenly becomes easy, but because you finally start to notice how surrounded by grace you already are. And this leads to joy. Okay. That is one way gratitude leads to joy. Gratitude also leads to joy because it fights coveting and discontentment. Gratitude fights coveting and discontentment. We recited the New City Catechism this morning about the 10th commandment. And it talks about being content. Do not covet, right? Being content. Coveting happens when you want something that does not belong to you; it belongs to somebody else. You want it. But God has said, no, this is not for you. At least right now, no, this is not for you. So when you covet, you are greedy, you are not content. You want something. Being ungrateful, not being thankful to God, this is where coveting grows. An ungrateful heart, this is where discontentment grows. When you do not give thanks to God, when you look around at what others have and you resent it, why does God give them that and not me? I want that. I deserve that. I have a right to that. When you do not practice gratitude, you envy what other people have and you end up coveting, you end up wanting, and you end up with discontentment. And that is soil for sin. I can tell you that. That is fertile soil for sin when you are coveting and you are not content. And our culture actually promotes this to no end. Not only through products and commercials, you need this or whatever, but also through social media. Scrolling through social media is like a feast of things to covet. It is like an all-you-can-eat buffet of things to covet. Look at their vacation. Look at their house. Look at how happy they are. Look at how much money they have. Look at their spouse. Look at their kids. And if you scroll without gratitude, your heart will say, I deserve that. Why not me? Why don't I have that? And this lack of gratitude will feed coveting. This lack of gratitude will feed discontentment. And your lack of gratitude to God will end up making you miserable, absolutely miserable. So how can you fight coveting and discontentment? Through gratitude. Having eyes to see God's grace in your life and then responding to that with thankfulness. So gratitude grows you in contentment. Gratitude helps fight coveting because gratitude again forces you to look around in your life and remember God's specific ways of showing you grace. So how about this? You are on the lookout for God's grace and you thank him for the prayer he answered last month. You thank him for that. You thank him for the encouraging text you got from a friend. The temptation. How about this? You thank God for the temptation you did not give into this time. You are grateful to God for that. How about you have had a crazy day but in the middle of that day you have a moment of peace. That is you seeing God's grace in your life, so we can thank God for specific ways that he has poured out his grace to us. Being grateful also means this: we are thankful for the giver, not just for his gifts. When you live with a grateful heart, you are saying, God, you are enough, you are enough. Turn with me to Psalm 73. Psalm 73 is near the end of the psalm. Psalm 73, look at verse 25. This is so good. Psalm 73, verse 25. Whom have I in heaven but you, Lord? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Who have I in heaven but you, Lord? There is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. When you have a grateful heart, you are affirming, God, you are enough. You are all I need. You can thankfully confess that I deserve nothing, right? You know what I deserve is God's judgment. That is the only thing I deserve. I deserve nothing. But in Christ, I have everything. Christian, in Christ, you have everything. And the best thing God can give us, He has given it. You know what it is? Himself. That is the best gift God can give us. So when you practice thanking God, we thank God not just for what He gives, not just for the gifts, but for the Giver. We thank God for Himself, for His attributes, His holiness, His sovereignty, His wisdom, His nearness, His love. When you repeatedly thank God for who He is, your faith becomes more solid. Your faith becomes more solid; your faith is less fragile because it is anchored in the unchanging Giver, not the changing gifts. And as a result, you are more content, right? And when you are more content, this posture of gratitude undercuts so many sins. When you are content about who God is, what He has done for you, when you are content with this, it undercuts so many sins. Greed, for example. Contentment, gratitude undercuts greed. Pornography. Gratitude and contentment undercut pornography. Comparison, bitterness, all these things. Gratitude to God fights all these things. And as I said, the greatest gift that God can give us is Himself. The greatest gift the Father can give us is being our Dad. The greatest gift that the Lord Jesus Christ can give us is Himself, being our Savior, our King. The greatest gift that the Holy Spirit can give us is Himself, dwelling within us, and He has done that for those who are in Christ. So thank God not just for the gifts but for the Giver, and when you are thankful, it just fights all sorts of sins. Gratitude fights discontentment; gratitude increases joy. The opposite is also true. If you are blind to God's grace in your life, if all you see in your life are the problems and you have gotten into the habit of focusing on the bad things in your life, if this happens, if you are blind to God's grace, you are not a thankful person, then the result is misery. The result is unhappiness. You are not a joyful person. An ungrateful person is an unhappy person. I have met so many people, including Christians, and shame on us, but I have met so many Christians who constantly complain about their lives. There is a place for crying out and complaining. A third of the Psalms, something like that, are Psalms of lament, right? So it is okay to cry out to God. But if all we do is complain about our lives, this shows that we do not have eyes to see God's grace in our lives, and it is a shame. I remember when I became a Christian; I just assumed everybody was going to be happy like me because I just got saved, and I walked into a church and it was filled with miserable people, and I just did not understand what was going on. How can you have God's grace? How can you have the Lord Jesus Christ and constantly complain? It is incessant. Shame on us. This should not be for God's people. And here is what those people have done; you can see how you can get into the habit of just focusing on the bad things in your life. And in doing so, you can become blind to God's grace. So, if you are struggling with unhappiness, God is calling you to make a change. By faith, have eyes to see God's grace in your life. Be on the lookout. It takes work if you are not used to it. But you can be intentional, you can look for God's grace in your life, and then you can respond to that with thankfulness to Him. And the result is joy. Think about people that you know who are grateful people. They are joyful people. They are happy people. They are content. They are settled in who they are. They know that the Lord is there with them. They know that God is the greatest gift. They are happy, grateful people. They are encouraging. They love people. They reach out. This is the way that grateful people are. This is what I want for us, church. All right, I am going to wrap up. Remember biblical gratitude. Is faith intentionally seeing God's grace and responding to this grace with thanks? Gratitude fights coveting. Gratitude fights discontentment, and gratitude increases joy. And if you realize, yes, I complain a lot, I grumble, I am discontent, the answer is not just to try harder to be cheerful. That is not the answer. Instead, be on the lookout for God's grace in your life and respond to that grace with gratitude and watch God work. Because as you fix your eyes on the Lord, and as you fix your eyes on His grace, your joy is going to deepen, your contentment with the Lord will deepen, and Christ will be more glorified in a thankful life. Amen? All right, let us pray together. Lord, we thank You. We are thankful for You, Lord. This church is thankful for You. Thank You for Your word. Thank You for the Psalms. They are filled with Psalms of thanks; the Psalms are the prayer book of the Bible. We are called to pray these things. Thank You that You have given us this. I pray, God, for my friends here that You would give us eyes to see Your grace in our lives. Please, Lord, help us with this. I know that we can fall into the bad habit of focusing only on the hard things in our lives, especially when we are going through trials. This is understandable to some extent, and yet You call us to something different. You call us to the greater privilege of seeing Your grace in our lives, Lord. So please help us with that. Please, Holy Spirit, help us to fix our eyes on Jesus Christ and to see how awesome He is. Jesus, You are glorious and awesome, and I pray that we as Your people would see that and respond to it with praise and thanksgiving. We love You. Thank You for Your love for us. Let us be grateful, thankful people. As a result, let us be content with where You have placed us. Let us be content and let us be joyful. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.