Lev 7:12, 'If he offers it by way of thanksgiving, then along with the sacrifice of thanksgiving he shall offer unleavened cakes mixed with oil, and unleavened wafers spread with oil, and cakes of well stirred fine flour mixed with oil. 
	In seeking that which the Lord would have us share together in this reading, I was pressed over and over again with the sacrifice of thanksgiving. We have dealt with the truth that we are to be thankful at all times and in every situation. This is so because in every dilemma and circumstance we are assured of the fact that the Lord has us well in hand. He is the One ruling and overruling and for that we can be extremely and joyfully thankful.
	What I was struck with is the fact that this is something that we need to reinforce within our hearts and minds over and over again. It is so easy to get sidetracked and distracted with all the things that we face each day that we lose sight of the truth of Jesus Christ being the One Who is living forth from us every moment of the day. We often find ourselves looking at the things and the events surrounding us rather than the One Who is using each of these elements to accomplish His perfect work in our lives and in the lives of our loved ones.  
	Another thing that has been impressed upon me is that it seems that many of us are not as filled with joyful appreciation and thankfulness for Jesus as our lives. We come together, we meet together, we pray together, we even sing and worship together, but there is no real and abiding thankfulness in our hearts for this privilege. We often see it, rather, as an obligation or something that we have to do, or simply as what should be done on Sundays and Wednesdays and Mondays or Tuesdays because it is expected and what we have habitually done. It isn’t really seen as the opportunity to gather in the name of Jesus Christ as His redeemed people and join our hearts together and give Him the very best expression of thanksgiving. 
	So many of us are filled with the cares and the woes and the aches and pains of this earthly sojourn that we can not appreciate the truth and the reality and the special and tremendous love with which we have been loved into the very family of God. Our eyes and our hearts and our minds are so filled with the things that this earth requires, that we forget to give God that which He deserves. By this, we show that we are truly not that thankful for our life in Christ when we cannot join together to offer Him praise and adoration and gratitude from hearts and minds that know that He will meet our every need, day in and day out.
	Rather, we come together with those attitudes and demeanors which express ingratitude and dullness of mind and carelessness of heart. We are caught up in the anxieties of this realm, worried about money, worried about our aches and pains and health, worried about our children, worried about our spouses, worried about where we are going to lunch, worried about what others think of us, worried about our jobs, worried about the impression we make, critical of others, critical of the songs we sing, critical and judging each word that is spoken to us, judging the lack of interaction we receive at the behest of others, thinking that we deserve more than we get because we just do not appreciate and value the fact that we have received every good thing in Jesus Christ! There is no way we can be thankful, truly and honestly thankful, adoringly and worshipfully expressing gratitude to God when the focal point of all our time and our energy and our efforts and our thoughts are centered in me, myself, and I! 
	We can take, as an example in the Old Testament, King Hezekiah. When he became king, there were some very severe issues that were foisted upon him. The nation of Judah was not following the Lord. The King of Assyria ruled the land promoting idol worship and promoting lack of respect and demeaning the honoring of the One True Living Lord God Almighty. Hezekiah was faced with the reality that the temple had been closed shut and sealed. His father had turned Jerusalem into a place to worship any god with any idea and anything the people craved in their idolatrous lusts. The nation of Judah was no longer the true worshippers of God, but a blending together of everything under the sun for the accommodation of everyone’s beliefs and ideas and thoughts.
	King Hezekiah rebelled against the King of Assyria and against the promotion of idol worship. He cleaned out and reopened the temple of the Lord and brought forth the few remaining priests and caused them to call the people of Jerusalem together to once again offer to The One True and Living Lord God Almighty, the worship that He, Alone, is due. We have the results of this recorded for us in 2 Chron 29:28-31, if you would please turn to it. 
	2 Chron 29:28-31, While the whole assembly worshiped, the singers also sang and the trumpets sounded; all this continued until the burnt offering was finished. Now at the completion of the burnt offerings, the king and all who were present with him bowed down and worshiped. Moreover, King Hezekiah and the officials ordered the Levites to sing praises to the Lord with the words of David and Asaph the seer. So they sang praises with joy, and bowed down and worshiped. Then Hezekiah answered and said, "Now that you have consecrated yourselves to the Lord, come near and bring sacrifices and thank offerings to the house of the Lord." And the assembly brought sacrifices and thank offerings, and all those who were willing brought burnt offerings. 
	If we continued reading, we would find that the situation had become so awesome that when King Hezekiah brought the people together to give sacrifices of thanksgiving to the Lord, there were not enough priests to do the sacrificing. The people were so filled with gratitude that the numbers of the animals to be sacrificed overwhelmed the priests who were to carry out those sacrifices. They needed the help of the Levites to accomplish all that expressed the full gratitude of the people to be able to worship the Lord God Almighty in the temple that had been opened and cleansed of all the filth and remnants of idolatry.
	If one reads the history of King Hezekiah, it will be very evident that this was a man who faced more than any of us will ever face in our lifetimes. His was a life which was an example of being beset by all the earthly cares and woes and dilemmas that only a select few can face and survive. He rebelled against the tyrant who was enslaving Judah. He and his nation was besieged for that rebellion. He was on his death bed and recovered. He was threatened and ridiculed and mocked. 
Yet, the Bible declares, in 2 Kings 18:5, that there was none like him. 2 Kings 18:5, He trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel; so that after him there was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor among those who were before him. That is quite the proclamation that God makes about this king who encouraged the people to rejoice and to give the Lord thanksgiving. As we are told in 2 Chron 29:36, Then Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced over what God had prepared for the people, because the thing came about suddenly. 
	Hezekiah’s was a legacy which declared the reality of absolute reliance on the Lord in the midst of every possible overwhelming obstacle and dilemma and care and worry. He did not shrink from honoring the Lord with his and the people’s sincere and utmost expressions of gratitude, no matter what the cost or the seemingly overwhelming distractions or the armies of foes encamped, very literally against him. The Lord honored that commitment and obedient gratitude with a longer life and freedom from the King of Assyria’s choke-hold. 
	The next example from the Old Testament of giving God heart-felt and true thanksgiving despite the circumstances which surround is found in the writing of the Prophet Nehemiah. The nation of Judah had been taken into years of exile. After such a long time, some of the exiles were allowed to return to rebuild the city of Jerusalem and the temple. Nehemiah records what happened when the people were able to complete some of the work and how the hearts of the remnant of the Lord’s people were filled with joyful thanksgiving and praise unto God for allowing them to return and to honor Him with this effort of rebuilding.
	In Neh 12:27, we see how the people responded at the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem. Neh 12:27, Now at the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem they sought out the Levites from all their places, to bring them to Jerusalem so that they might celebrate the dedication with gladness, with hymns of thanksgiving and with songs to the accompaniment of cymbals, harps, and lyres. 
	The people wanted to give the Lord all praise and honor and reverence and thanksgiving with their joyful gladness and hymns and songs. They brought forth the cymbals and the harps and the lyres in order to make a joyful noise unto the Lord in honoring Him and thanking Him for bringing them back to the city of the Lord’s Temple and presence. They were thankful in the midst of their dire situation. 
Although they were back in the city of Jerusalem, they were still under the thumb of another nation. Because they were few in number and weak in power, they were being ridiculed and attacked by a variety of thugs and wandering nomads who were quick to harangue and harass such a helpless group of people. 
As well, they had lost much of their crops and herds and means of livelihood. They were poor and many were widowed or orphaned and without much hope for a better life. In spite of these practical issues and hardships, these people banded together to give thanks to God and to rejoice in the truth that they were His people and were now being given the ability to praise and to worship and to honor Him with gladness. They were filled with supreme gratitude to be called by His Name even in the midst of the fragile and seemingly hopeless and helpless circumstances surrounding them on all sides.
Their endless thankfulness was detailed in Neh 12:43, as being so full of joy in the elation of The Lord that the rejoicing of the entire city echoed throughout the region around them. Neh 12:43, and on that day they offered great sacrifices and rejoiced because God had given them great joy, even the women and children rejoiced, so that the joy of Jerusalem was heard from afar. 
	Oh that all the people of God would be characterized by the testimony that rang thoroughout the territory surrounding Jerusalem …because God had given them great joy, even the women and children rejoiced, so that the joy of Jerusalem was heard from afar. That should be the witness of every gathering of those who have been redeemed by the Lord. This college should know that we are here by the fact that our joy in Jesus is heard from afar. 
It should not make a difference that we have so many issues in our lives, that we have so many things going on, that we are surrounded by commitments and appointments and obligations to ourselves and to others. No, what should matter is that everything else is set aside for the time that we are gathered together and that our voices should manifest the joy of the Lord that will echo throughout the hearts and minds of every one of us!  
	This then brings us to the Prophet Jeremiah, and what is written in Jer 33:10+11, our final passage of this morning. In it, the Lord makes known why we should be so praising Him and why our hearts and minds should be focused on giving Him thanks as we are gathered together. Jer 33:10+11, "Thus says the Lord, 'Yet again there shall be heard in this place, of which you say," It is a waste, without man and without beast, "that is, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate, without man and without inhabitant and without beast, the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the voice of those who say, "Give thanks to the Lord of hosts, For the Lord is good, For His lovingkindness is everlasting"; and of those who bring a thank offering into the house of the Lord. For I will restore the fortunes of the land as they were at first, 'says the Lord. 
	How can we be anything but thankful when we know that for a certainty, without any doubt or hesitation that …the Lord is good, For His lovingkindness is everlasting… When we know God in the reality of this glorious truth, there is nothing else that we can do but give Him thanks with all joy and adoration. It will not be just in these times of being together, but it will become the very characteristic of our daily walk on this earth. Everyone that we encounter will see that our lives are filled with a joyous attitude and demeanor of being thankful. There will be that difference in us which shows that God means something more than just a doctrine that we espouse, more than just a habitual amount of time in church, more than just memorized prayers voiced at certain times of the day. He will be expressed as the very focus and reason that we live on this earth. And that expression will be one of joy filled gratitude and resounding praise and adoration unto the Lord God Almighty. So be it. Amen.

This morning’s benediction is 1 Thess 1:2-4, We give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers; constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father, knowing, brethren beloved by God, His choice of you; Amen.