What Does It Take for You to Be Thankful?

Thanksgiving, 11/27/24 Jonah 2:9 What Does It Take for You to Be Thankful? I. A pleasant environment? II. A secure future? III. A fulfilling purpose? Can you be needy and thankful at the same time? Think about that for a moment. Can you be needy and thankful at the same time? I guess that depends. It depends on what you are needy for and how deep your need is. For instance, late tomorrow afternoon, after you’ve enjoyed your Thanksgiving feast you might declare, “Now I need a nap” and, at the same time, your stomach, full of delicious food dishes, is filling you with thanks, and rightly so. But, if tomorrow something terrible happens to you and you need immediate life-saving assistance, the concept of being thankful on Thanksgiving might be the farthest thing from your mind. How can you be thankful at a time when you don’t know if you’ll live to see Black Friday? In other words, our level of thankfulness or even being thankful at all, depends on the situation we’re in. It often depends on our surroundings and our human reaction to them. And then there’s this: While we might not be able to be thankful given the situation, we’re in, there are people in our world—perhaps more than we care to know—who could and would be thankful if they were in our situation instead of the one they’re currently in. Do you see what I mean? What makes a person thankful can be a very subjective, individual situation. So, let’s build on that. Instead of making a mental list of all the reasons you have to be thankful this Thanksgiving, let’s spend time seeing where the bar is. In other words, what do you need to be thankful? To help you answer that question for yourself, join me in looking at these words of Jonah the prophet and reflecting on what it took for him in his life to be thankful. Part I. When was the last time you exclaimed loud enough for people to hear, “Now this is living!”? As you recall that time, recall also what led you to say it. I’m guessing you were enjoying at that moment a very pleasant place and very pleasant circumstances. Perhaps you were enjoying a vacation at your favorite vacation location. One of your favorite people in the world was sitting next to you enjoying it with you. And in your hand, was one of your favorite things to drink. And you exclaimed, “Now this is living!” Jonah doesn’t exclaim, “Now this is living!”, but those words wouldn’t be out of place with the tone of the words of our text. He speaks about thanksgiving. His words exude more than a little joy. Just where was he when he spoke these words and what was he doing? Permit me to share a bit of biblical background. Jonah lived about 780 BC, after the prophets Elijah and Elisha. He lived in Israel, the northern kingdom of the Jews, which was filled with idol worship. At this time, Israel was enjoying a time of political power and economic prosperity, even though it was spiritually rotten. Israel’s biggest threat was the Assyrians to the north. So, where was Jonah at this time that made him so thankful? Was he at home in Israel, making money hand over fist like the rest of his fellow Jews? Was he sitting back, listening to God’s words of condemnation and his threat of hell for the Assyrians, a godless, wicked, inhuman nation? Had he just received word that the angel of the Lord put to death 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in one night, an event related in two places of the Old Testament? It wouldn’t take all three of these together to make Jonah speak these words of thanks. Just one of them would be enough, wouldn’t it? What would it take for Jonah to be thankful enough to speak these words? How about being confined in a place none of us have ever endured nor likely will? How about speaking these words while being what would appear to be a mammal’s Thanksgiving feast? What am I talking about? Jonah spoke these words from inside the belly of a huge fish. You heard me right. He spoke these words from inside the fish that the Lord had caused to swallow him. So, what could possibly lead Jonah to be thankful while encased by the soft tissue of the stomach of a fish? The fact that he was alive, that’s what. Recall what had just taken place. During a fierce storm at sea, the sailors had thrown Jonah overboard at his command from God. Jonah tells us he sank to the bottom of the sea. By all accounts, his final experience was his lungs filling with salt water. But it didn’t happen. A huge fish sent by God saved him from death. What’s more, Jonah now realized that God did so for a reason. Jonah had refused to do what God told him to do—go to Nineveh, the capital of the hated Assyrians, and preach to them. In fact, he boarded a ship headed in the other direction in an utter useless act of defiance against the almighty God. Jonah realized he should be suffering a painful death as the punishment for his brazen insolence, but he wasn’t. God had saved him for a saving purpose, not a damning purpose. And that’s all it took while inside the belly of a fish to exclaim, “But I, with shouts of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’” What does it take for you to be thankful? Part II. When you have endured a dire situation for some time, and it appears the ordeal is almost ended, you’re thankful. You can see the light at the end of your tunnel. What was Jonah seeing as he spoke these words of our text? I don’t think there was any light, first of all. The only tunnel he might have been facing was the esophagus of this huge fish. And at the end of it was a set of gleaming, razor-sharp teeth. So how could he be thankful? He had no idea what was going to happen to him. At least, not from a human standpoint. But recall the details of this event. The storm arose from the hand of God to prevent Jonah from fleeing from him. The fish swallowed Jonah as directed by the Lord to save Jonah from drowning. The Lord had impressed on Jonah that he had a plan for Jonah’s immediate future, and it didn’t involve Jonah sitting on a beach in Spain, which is where Jonah had intended to go. No, the Lord had special plans for Jonah. Jonah was his prophet and God’s immediate assignment for Jonah was to reveal God’s amazing, astounding grace and love. God had chosen Jonah out of all the people in the world to go and preach to the people of Nineveh that they should repent. Now, why would the Lord want such a ruthless, idolatrous, heathen people such as the Assyrians to repent? Because he loved them dearly. He didn’t want them to perish eternally. He wanted them to trust in him and be saved eternally. No doubt Jonah was impressed with the Lord’s love and grace. If there was love and grace from the Lord for the Assyrians, then surely there was love and grace from the Lord for him. God had a plan for Jonah. He would continue to preach God’s word and then the Lord would call him home to heaven. And Jonah was thankful—thankful for a secure future. What does it take for you to be thankful? Your future is just as certain as Jonah’s. Part III. In some respects, you might admire Jonah. After all, he was a prophet chosen by God. A book of the Bible bears his name. Billions of people know him and his story. And it’s true—Jonah did have the enviable position as one of God’s prophets. But his assignment from the Lord—his purpose—was far from enviable. Recall Jonah’s immediate reaction to being called as God’s prophet to preach to the people of Nineveh. It was the last thing Jonah wanted to do. He would likely have chosen any other people on the face of the earth to preach to. This was not his choice. Two, it was the last thing his people wanted him to do. Show any kind of favor to the Assyrians? That’s ludicrous. More than that—it’s traitorous! They’re the sworn enemies of the Jews! But that was Jonah’s calling and purpose. And as unlikely as it seemed to be a successful assignment, that’s exactly what it was. The people of Nineveh listened to Jonah’s preaching and repented. Even Nineveh’s king repented! An astounding miracle! But Jonah wasn’t thankful for that. At least that was his immediate reaction. Was he thankful for it later in his life? Perhaps. But whether he was or not, there was no denying that Jonah had a fulfilling purpose in life. What does it take for you to be thankful? How fulfilling is your purpose? May your celebration of Thanksgiving which begins about four hours from now center on the realization of how thankful you can and should be. Like, Jonah, we deserve nothing good from our God, but even when the circumstances of our life are slapping the smiles off our faces, we are filled with an inner joy that knows no limits. We have a God who loves us with an everlasting love, and he showed it when he sacrificed his Son for us. That sacrifice and our Savior’s resurrection from the dead made our eternal future secure. Heaven is our home no matter what happens to us here. Our purpose is now to worship our God for all he has done for us. Our daily lives are to be an unending hymn of praise to God who has secured our eternal future and provides for us each day as he sees fit. What does it take for you to be thankful? Simply this—the faithful, eternal love of your Lord, a love he shows you every day. May your hearts be filled with thanks to your Lord this Thanksgiving! Amen.