Thanks for the Bread, the Wine and Oil
Minister: | Rev. Ronald Van Overloop |
Date: | 11/22/2018 AM (Thanksgiving Day) |
Text: | Psalm 104:14,15 |
- Gifted with necessities.
- Thanksgiving Day must not be just a general attitude of thanks, but gratitude to the God Who gives the harvest.
- The sincere, godly Christian knows that the bountiful harvest is from the Creator God.
- When we look at the Creator’s gift of the physical harvest, then we see it as a picture of the spiritual blessings of salvation.
- Our text declares that God “causeth the grass to grow.”
- For all the things man is able to do, he cannot make anything alive and grow.
- God’s purpose for the grass is so He “may bring forth food out of the earth.”
- The devout eye sees God’s hand in every field blade of grass.
- Thanksgiving Day must not be just a general attitude of thanks, but gratitude to the God Who gives the harvest.
- God not only produces in abundance for our basic needs but also for our unneeded, luxurious desires.
- “Bread which strengtheth man’s heart.”
- God brings forth bread, the staff of life, the most indispensable and necessary means for man’s nourishment.
- Man has strength and courage after eating.
- Besides the necessary bread, God also gives us the pleasant and unnecessary luxuries: wine and oil.
- God also furnishes us with a feast, including wine.
- And God gives us “oil to make his face to shine.” (cf. Ps. 23:5; Eccl. 9:7,8; Ruth 3:3).
- “Bread which strengtheth man’s heart.”
- God is to be blessed for all He gives. “Bless Jehovah, O my soul. O Jehovah my God, Thou art very great” (1).
- That God has to call us to praise Him, and especially in harvest time, points out the fact that our natural proneness is to forget.
- It is especially with the wine and oil that we are to rejoice in our God.
- While the ungodly world wallows in pleasures without discerning the Giver, may we use the necessities and the luxuries gifted to us with joyful and grateful moderation.