St. Luke’s Evangelical Lutheran Church -- Watertown, WI
Pastor Mark Gartner
Sermon for Christian Education Sunday -- September 14^th and September 17^th, 2006

Dear children of God’s many blessings. Amen

I remember reading an article about being thankful. It was written from the perspective of a mother of a family as she worked her way through a whole year. Each month this mother would be complaining about something in her life. For instance one month she did not have enough money to pay the bills and to buy the things the family needed. Another month she complained that she had to live in a house that needed too many repairs. Another month (a summer month) she lamented the fact that her children messed up the house way faster than she could clean it. One month she was sad because her husband was so plain (obviously the month of February, when she didn’t get a special Valentine’s surprise gift). Finally it came to the month of November and we hear this lady saying a prayer of thanksgiving, because November is the month to give thanks. She thanked God for allowing her to be "middle class" which allowed her to possess far more than she really needed. She thanked God for a husband who was a Christian and a good father and husband. She thanked God for her children who were also children of God. She then asked God to forgive her for her unthankfulness the past 11 months.

Good thing that this doesn’t describe you and me. There is no way that we would sound anything like this lady. We don’t complain all the time, and we do say thanks most of the time, don’t we? This article serves a great purpose in getting us focused for our sermon today.

So what was the point of that article? The point of that article was not to point out how this lady complained all the time. The point of this article was to lead us to realize that we also have many things to be thankful for and that we should not be giving thanks only once a year around Thanksgiving time. Our whole life throughout the entire year is an opportunity to say thanks to our God. With this thought in our minds, the writer of Psalm 100 is going to lead us to:

As we look at Psalm 100 we see a psalm that is full of reasons why we can be so thankful, and full of ways in which we can say thanks to our God. As I read through this psalm during the time that I was writing this sermon it became clear to me that giving thanks is an area in my life that could use some improvement. As I looked back at the past year or 5 years or 10 years or my whole life there have been many things that God has done for me or given to me for which I have not always shown thanks. He brought me into God’s family. He allowed me to grow up in a Christian home and to attend a Christian Day School. He blessed me with 2 brothers and a sister who share my faith. He blessed me with the abilities and gifts to become a pastor. He has blessed me with a Christian wife who is the perfect person for me and the perfect mom for our children. He has blessed me with children who are growing up in the ways of the Lord. He has blessed me with a church family here at St. Luke’s which is striving for the same goal of heaven, and the list grows longer every minute. For all these things I can say Thank-You God.

As we listen to the words of the Psalm writer, how can we miss the great things God has done for us? We can start with one of the most basic things we know, "Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us and we are his." When is the last time that we have sat down and appreciated who God really is. From little on we have been taught that God is the most powerful and almighty person we know. We know that God is not just an ordinary person. He is special. He is the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In fear and reverence we look to our God and worship our God for who he is. He has been here from eternity. He didn’t have a beginning and he has no end. He knows all things, even before they happen. He planned all things, even before things existed. This is our God!

God, then, showed his almighty power as he created this wonderful world and us in 6 days. In other words, God in his mercy and love created the world we live in and placed you and me into this world. We confess this in the beginning of the 1^st Article of Apostles’ Creed where we say, I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and being good Lutherans we quickly and naturally ask -- What does this mean? It means as we all know:

Just look at this list that many of us have already learned in our Confirmation days. God has given us more than just a body. He has given us a soul and he has also given each of us our mind and the abilities to think and do all kind of things. And look at that list of things he provides for us to preserve us while we are on this earth. But why does God do this? What does the last part of the meaning of the 1^st Article say,

The only reason that we have anything is because God loved us enough to give them to us. We don’t deserve the things he provides us with nor did we earn these things. God gave them to us. We don’t deserve or earn any of our financial gains. God has saw fit to give them to us. And all this leads us to see that we can be very thankful. The last part of the meaning of the 1^st Article says, For all this I ought to thank and praise, to serve and obey him. God put us here that we might live for him and serve him all the days of our life.

Isn’t that exactly what Psalm 100 is about. Look at all the phrases which encourage us to thank, worship and praise our loving God. The writer tells us to "Shout for joy" and "Enter the gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise" and to "Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs." As we gather here today we can see that singing and praising God is very much a part of our worship services, but how many of us think about church as an opportunity to thank God. As we attended church the next 12 months do we see church as a avenue for thanking God for all that he has given us, or is worship boring, dull and much like a chore? Let us raise our voices to praise and thank our God with songs of thanksgiving.

On top of all these wonderful earthly blessings we know full well that God has given us the greatest gift of all. God knew that we would not remain perfect and he had a plan to save us from our sins. In his perfect love he decided to send his one and only Son to be our Savior and to free us from all the ravages of our sin. Our text tells us this same thing, "We are his people, the sheep of his pasture." God has made us a part of his spiritual family through the work of Jesus Christ. And we learned so well the what does this mean from the 2^nd article which tell us very precisely what it took for this to happen,

For most of us we don’t remember a time where were not in God’s family. We were brought into God’s flock as an infant through the washing of rebirth. This however doesn’t mean that we have the license to forget the great sacrifice and suffering that it took to bring us into God’s family. The sacrifice of God’s own Son on the cross for the forgiveness of all our sins. I hope and pray that the work of Jesus isn’t so well known to us that it has lost some of its splendor and joy. I pray that the hardships and hustle and bustle of our daily lives doesn’t cloud our hearts to see in full glory all that God has given to us. As we join here today to say thanks, I pray that the words of the psalm writer will never be forgotten, even when things of this world look to push God and his blessings aside.

As we sit here today on Christian Education Sunday we see another tool from God that we can be thankful for. St. Luke’s congregation has our TSL Day School and our active and thriving Sunday School. Let’s look a little closer at why we can be so very thankful. We have over 170 kids enrolled in our Day School. We have over 100 kids enrollment in our Sunday School. We have 37 students at our Lakeside Lutheran High School. We have 22 students at our LPS school in town. We have numerous students at MLC and the Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary a well as at our WLC. For all these Christian opportunities we say thanks. For places to come and hear God’s Word throughout the whole curriculum we say thanks. For teachers who have decided to dedicate their lives to teaching in our Christian Schools we say thanks. For parents who see these wonderful tools and make the sacrifices to send their kids to Christian Schools and Sunday School we say thanks. For congregational members at St. Luke’s who see how important these Christian opportunities are and support them with their prayers and their very generous financial offerings we say thanks.

As we gather to say thanks for all that God has blessed us with in Christian Education, we still come before our God to ask that he would continue to fill our hearts with the power of his love so that we continue to support these many Christian opportunities that we have here at St. Luke’s and around this area. It is no secret that the fastest growing part of St. Luke’s budget is in the areas of supporting Christian education. This year alone 55% of our $1,000,000 dollar budget goes to support our Christian Education and the work of our synod. This does not include payments to our loan to build facilities so that we can support our new and expanded Christian education facilities. This part of our budget is increasing at a very large rate each year. It was not too many years ago that we had under 100 kids in our day school and less than 15 kids at Lakeside and Prep and very few students at MLC, WLS or WLC. Are we truly showing our thanks in our offerings or are we complaining because God has brought us too many blessings that we can’t keep up with?

I want to make it very clear. We never ever should be putting money in our offering envelopes so that St. Luke’s can meet its operating budget. We should never be filling our envelopes thinking that this little amount isn’t really all that important because we have such a large budget at St. Luke’s. We give for much better reasons than that. We should never feel forced to give, but our hearts should be moved by the pure joy and love that God poured into our hearts when he declared us not guilty of our sins by his death on the cross. Let me put it this way. Each month you need to write out many different checks to pay for the many things you need each month to live. Does the check that you write out to church bring joy to your hearts, or is it something we do because we have to? Do you feel more joy in generously filling your offering envelopes than paying for a delicious meal at a favorite restaurant? What a wonderful way for us to show our thanks as we sit down and look at our offerings in this different way. Not as an obligation, but as a way to say thanks to God who has given each of us everything. The Psalm writer states it so well, "Give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever." Amen