(Psalms 107:1 )  Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.

(Psalms 107:8-9 )  Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men, {9} for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.

(Psalms 107:21-22 )  Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men. {22} Let them sacrifice thank offerings and tell of his works with songs of joy.

(Psalms 107:43 )  Whoever is wise, let him heed these things and consider the great love of the LORD.

(1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 )  Be joyful always; {17} pray continually; {18} give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

God calls his people to be a thankful people. Yet we have become so cynical as a people that we are prone to wonder if it might not be wise to take Thanksgiving Day off our calendars. Political scandal, drugs, AIDS, racism, divorce, abused children — for what do we give thanks this year?

The more our thinking tends in that direction, the less spiritual our hearts will be. One of the horrible things Paul saw in a world hostile to God was its lack of thanksgiving to the Lord. “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Rom. 1:21).

I don’t want to be a godless, thankless person!

Did you hear about Alvin the atheist? He sat down to his Thanksgiving Day feast and realized he was at his lowest point, for he felt grateful but had no one to thank! I’m not an atheist, and I believe these words from Jesus’ half-brother: (James 1:17 )  Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

I know whom to thank. I am always making requests of him — shopping my “want list” at his throne like a child before Christmas. For all those requests he grants and for the many gifts I receive from him without taking notice, I refuse to be a thankless beggar. I’m glad we have a Thanksgiving Day on the American calendar to remind all of us to give thanks.

Are you aware that as early as 1400 B.C. the Israelites had a day of thanksgiving that was ordained by Yahweh? It came fifty days after the beginning of the harvest and was known as Pentecost or the Feast of Weeks. By that time the grain had been harvested, the fruits gathered, and the olives pressed. In the midst of great rejoicing for the Lord’s goodness, men from every tribe in Israel — often accompanied by their entire families — made their way to Jerusalem for eight days of feasting.

As a matter of fact, one could make a case for saying that all three of Israel’s annual pilgrim feasts were thanksgiving festivals. Passover was certainly a time of thanksgiving to the Lord for his deliverance from Egypt in a great exodus of grace. It praised God for sparing the firstborn of Israel’s children when death was being visited on the Egyptians. And the Feast of Tabernacles was a joyous festival that remembered God’s faithfulness to Israel during forty years of wilderness wandering.

I am thankful for God today, and that begins with what “God is”….there are three expressions in John’s writings that help us understand the nature of God:

1. (John 4:24 ) God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” God is spirit as to His essence; He is not flesh and blood. To be sure, Jesus Christ now has a glorified body in heaven, and one day we shall have bodies like His body. But being by nature spirit, God is not limited by time and space the way His creatures are.
2. God is light. This refers to His holy nature. In the Bible, light is a symbol of holiness and darkness is a symbol of sin (John 3:18-21; 1 John 1:5-10). God cannot sin because He is holy.
3. (1 John 4:8 ) Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. (1 John 4:16 )  And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.

God is love. It has accurately been said that “love does not define God, but God defines love.” God is love and God is light; therefore, His love is a holy love, and His holiness is expressed in love. All that God does expresses all that God is.

What God is determines what we ought to be. “As He is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17). The fact that Christians love one another is evidence of their fellowship with God and their sonship from God, and it is also evidence that they know God. Their experience with God is not simply a once-for-all crisis; it is a daily experience of getting to know Him better and better. True theology (the study of God) is not a dry, impractical course in doctrine—it is an exciting day-by-day experience that makes us Christlike!

A large quantity of radioactive material was stolen from a hospital. When the hospital administrator notified the police, he said: “Please warn the thief that he is carrying death with him, and that the radioactive material cannot be successfully hidden. As long as he has it in his possession, it is affecting him disastrously!”

A person who claims he knows God and is in union with Him must be personally affected by this relationship. A Christian ought to become what God is, and “God is love.” To argue otherwise is to prove that one does not really know God!

What God Did: “He Sent His Son” (1 John 4:9-11)

(1 John 4:9-11 )  This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. {10} This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. {11} Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

This is the only place in the epistle where Jesus is called God’s only-begotten Son. The title is used in John’s Gospel (John 1:14). It means “unique, the only one of its kind.”

Because God is love, He must communicate—not only in words but in deeds. True love is never static or inactive. God reveals His love to mankind in many ways. He has geared all of creation to meeting men’s needs. Until man’s sin brought creation under bondage, man had on earth a perfect home in which to love and serve God.

God’s love was revealed in the way He dealt with the nation of Israel. (Deuteronomy 7:7-8 )  The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. {8} But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

The greatest expression of God’s love is in the death of His Son. (Romans 5:8 )  But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Two purposes are given for Christ’s death on the cross: that we might live through Him (1 John 4:9) and that He might be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10). His death was not an accident; it was an appointment. He did not die as a weak martyr, but as a mighty conqueror.

It is important that Christians progress in their understanding of love. To love one another simply out of a sense of duty is good, but to love out of appreciation (rather than obligation) is even better.

What God Is Doing: “God Abides In Us” (1 John 4:12-16)

(1 John 4:12-16 )  No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. {13} We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. {14} And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. {15} If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. {16} And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.

All this is preparation for the third great fact: God does something in us! We are participants in the great drama of God’s love!

Here we discover what God had in mind when He devised His great plan of salvation. To begin with, God’s desire is to live in us. He is not satisfied simply to tell us that He loves us, or even show us that He loves us.

It is interesting to trace God’s dwelling places as recorded in the Bible. In the beginning, God had fellowship with man in a personal, direct way (Gen. 3:8), but sin broke that fellowship. It was necessary for God to shed the blood of animals to cover the sins of Adam and Eve so that they might come back into His fellowship.

One of the key words in the Book of Genesis is walked. God walked with men, and men walked with God. Enoch (Gen. 5:22), Noah (Gen. 6:9), and Abraham walked with God (Gen. 17:1; 24:40).

But by the time of the events recorded in Exodus, a change had taken place: God did not simply walk with men, He lived, or dwelt, with them. God’s commandment to Israel was, “And let them make Me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them” (Ex. 25:8). The first of those sanctuaries was the tabernacle. When Moses dedicated it, the glory of God came down and moved into the tent (Ex. 40:33-35).

God dwelt in the camp, but He did not dwell in the bodies of the individual Israelites.

Unfortunately, the nation sinned and God’s glory departed (1 Sam. 4:21). But God used Samuel and David to restore the nation; and Solomon built God a magnificent temple. When the temple was dedicated, once again the glory of God came to dwell in the land (1 Kings 8:1-11).

But history repeated itself, and Israel disobeyed God and was taken into Captivity. The gorgeous temple was destroyed. One of the prophets of the Captivity, Ezekiel, saw the glory of God depart from it (Ezek. 8:4; 9:3; 10:4; 11:22-23).

Did the glory ever return? Yes—in the Person of God’s Son, Jesus Christ! “And the Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us, and we beheld His glory” (John 1:14, lit.). The glory of God dwelt on earth in the body of Jesus Christ, for His body was the temple of God (John 2:18-22). But wicked men nailed His body to a cross. They crucified “the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8). All this was part of God’s thrilling plan, and Christ arose from the dead, returned to heaven, and sent His Holy Spirit to dwell in men.

The glory of God now lives in the bodies of God’s children. “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?” (6:19, nasb) The glory of God departed from the tabernacle and the temple when Israel disobeyed God, but Jesus has promised that the Spirit will abide in us forever (John 14:16).

With this background, we can better understand what 1 John 4:12-16 is saying to us. God is invisible (1 Tim. 1:17), and no man can see Him in His essence. Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15). By taking on Himself a human body, Jesus was able to reveal God to us. But Jesus is no longer here on earth. How, then, does God reveal Himself to the world?

Imagine the wonder and the privilege of having God abide in you! The Old Testament Israelite would look with wonder at the tabernacle or temple, because the presence of God was in that building. No man would dare to enter the holy of holies, where God was enthroned in glory! But we have God’s Spirit living in us! We abide in this love, and we experience the abiding of God in us. “If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him” (John 14:23).

God’s love is proclaimed in the Word (“God is love”) and proved at the cross. But here we have something deeper: God’s love is perfected in the believer. Fantastic as it may seem, God’s love is not made perfect in angels, but in sinners saved by His grace. We Christians are now the tabernacles and temples in which God dwells. He reveals His love through us.

Three different witnesses are suggested in these verses: 1. The witness of the believer that Jesus Christ is God’s Son (1 John 4:15); 2. the witness in the believer by the Spirit (1 John 4:13); and 3. the witness through the believer that God is love and that He sent His Son to die for the world (1 John 4:14).

Abiding in God’s love produces two wonderful spiritual benefits in the life of a believer: 1. He grows in knowledge, and 2. He grows in faith (1 John 4:16). The more we love God, the more we understand the love of God. And the more we understand His love, the easier it is for us to trust Him. After all, when you know someone intimately and love him sincerely, you have no problem putting your confidence in him.

“God is love,” then, is not simply a profound biblical statement. It is the basis for a believer’s relationship with God and with his fellowman. Because God is love, we can love. His love is not past history; it is present reality. “Love one another” begins as a commandment (1 John 4:7), then it becomes a privilege (1 John 4:11). It is also the thrilling consequence and evidence of our abiding in Christ (1 John 4:12). Loving one another is not something we simply ought to do; it is something we want to do.

Some practical applications grow out of this basic truth:

1. The better we know God’s love, the easier it will be to live as a Christian. Bible knowledge alone does not take the place of personal experience of God’s love. In fact, it can be a dangerous substitute if we are not careful.
2. Unless we love the lost, our verbal witness to them will be useless. The Gospel message is a message of love. This love was both declared and demonstrated by Jesus Christ. The only way we can effectively win others is to declare the Gospel and demonstrate it in how we live. Too much “witnessing” today is a mere mouthing of words. People need an expression of love.

One reason why God permits the world to hate Christians is so that Christians may return love for the world’s hatred. “Blessed are you when men revile you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, on account of Me …. But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:11, 44, nasb).