Lev 22:29, And when you sacrifice a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Lord, you shall sacrifice it so that you may be accepted. 
    	This morning, we want to consider one of the great attributes that should characterize us as God’s Chosen people. In the Old Testament, as we read in this passage, there was the every provision for God’s people to offer up sacrifices of thanksgiving unto Him that will be accepted because they are offered in the manner in which God is glorified and adored. This carries, as well, into the New Testament church, as we will consider. 
Initially, we have this entire chapter dealing with the appropriate manner of what animals were not allowed to be sacrificed before the Lord in utmost reverence for Who He was and what He had done. It would be an act of abject dishonor and unqualified disrespect to bring to the Most Holy and Perfect and Awesome Lord God Almighty anything but the best of the herd, the best of the flock, and the best of the field. This was laid out in very specific detail, as we have been reading in order that there would be no misunderstanding as to the manner of honoring God in the way that separated His people from the ways of the rest of the world surrounding them. What the other nations offered to their dead and hand made deities would never be acceptable to the True and Living Lord God Almighty.
The means of giving God appropriate thanksgiving through the prescribed sacrifices was detailed earlier in this Book of Leviticus, Chapter 7, verses 12-15. Lev 7:12-15, '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. 'With the sacrifice of his peace offerings for thanksgiving, he shall present his offering with cakes of leavened bread. 'And of this he shall present one of every offering as a contribution to the Lord; it shall belong to the priest who sprinkles the blood of the peace offerings. 'Now as for the flesh of the sacrifice of his thanksgiving peace offerings, it shall be eaten on the day of his offering; he shall not leave any of it over until morning. 
    	There were specific steps that had to be set into place in order for the suppliant to truly show the Lord that he or she was thankful for the manner of God’s provision and Lordship. To offer a sacrifice of thankfulness to the Lord was one of the stipulated sacrifices that included peace offerings, votive offerings, and freewill offerings. It was a special sacrifice which required true care and dedication in being offered unto the Lord.
	In Ps 54:6+7, the Psalmist declared that this was to be prepared with willingness of heart and being for the fact of what God has done. Ps 54:6+7, Willingly I will sacrifice to Thee; I will give thanks to Thy name, O Lord, for it is good. For He has delivered me from all trouble; And my eye has looked with satisfaction upon my enemies. It is good to give God extreme thanksgiving when He delivers us from our trouble and strife. It is at that time that we should willingly bring to Him the full measure of our freewill offerings of thankfulness and appreciation and joy in being called one of His very own people.
	The Psalmist then encourages us, in Ps 107:20-22, with the fact that when God heals us by His Word, representing both physical and spiritual healing, we should be joyously offering Him all the sacrifices of thanksgiving in the course of our declaration of His glorious wonder and might and awesome consideration of such as us. God deserves to be thoroughly thanked with praise and song and joy-filled expressions of our hearts unto Him. 
Ps 107:20-22, He sent His word and healed them, And delivered them from their destructions. Let them give thanks to the Lord for His lovingkindness, And for His wonders to the sons of men! Let them also offer sacrifices of thanksgiving, And tell of His works with joyful singing. 
    	The Psalmist, then, in Ps 116:16-19, proceeded to reinforce the fact that the real means of giving God thanks is in the presence of His people. It is a witness to those who are still in need and in desperate ways to see that God does answer prayer and serves to help His people. As we offer Him thanksgiving for all that He has done, we are making a public declaration that He, Alone, is worthy of all our praise and adoration in thankfulness for Who He is and what He has accomplished. To truly thank the Lord is a public offering of gratitude and testimony to just how marvelous and majestic and powerful and understanding and kind and loving and merciful and gracious is Our God. Amen and amen. 
Ps 116:16-19, O Lord, surely I am Thy servant, I am Thy servant, the son of Thy handmaid, Thou hast loosed my bonds. To Thee I shall offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving, And call upon the name of the Lord. I shall pay my vows to the Lord, Oh may it be in the presence of all His people, In the courts of the Lord's house, In the midst of you, O Jerusalem. Praise the Lord! 
    	It is a reverent and glorious thing to publicly declare just how much we are thankful to God for all that He is to us. It is right and it is honoring and it adds to His majestic glory throughout all of His Creation when His people offer Him thankfulness and gratitude in the assembly of the saints. It exponentially adds to His praise and His worship and His adoration as His people say so!
	The prophet Hosea indicated this choral sacrifice of thanksgiving to God in Hos 14:2, as he encouraged the people to turn back to the Lord and to make known their desire publically to have the Lord forgive them and then to express their thanksgiving and awe of Him through the fruit of their lips. Hos 14:2, Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to Him, "Take away all iniquity, And receive us graciously, That we may present the fruit of our lips. The fruit of our lips is joy and praise and thanksgiving.
	This, then brings us into the New Testament, where we will consider several aspects of the offering of gratitude that is anticipated from those who love the Lord and are truly appreciative and enthralled by the so great love with which He has loved us. As the church, the chosen people of God, redeemed by His work alone, we should be characterized by unending thanksgiving unto Him. 
	Apart from His grace and His mercy, we would be eternally doomed and lost in our sin and trespasses. However, because He chose to love us unto Himself, through the death and resurrection of His Only Begotten Son, we are eternally secure and should be witnesses to all of that so great and manifested gratitude. 
	Sadly, Our Lord illustrated what is so true of most of us when He healed the 10 lepers as recorded in Luke, Chapter 17. He cured them and then told them to go to the priests and show themselves free from leprosy so they could be restored into their communities. 9 of the 10 did as most of humanity does, just expecting to be healed and then taking it for granted. They were caught up in the concern for their own benefit and did not even consider the One Who had healed them. 
However, one of the ten, as we read in Luke 17:15+16, recognized the full measure of what Christ had done and turned back to search Him out and to give Him thanks for healing him. Luke 17:15+16, Now one of them, when he saw that he had been healed, turned back, glorifying God with a loud voice, and he fell on his face at His feet, giving thanks to Him. And he was a Samaritan. Only 1 of the 10 sought out His healer to offer Him sincere and wholehearted thanksgiving! The other 9 just went on their way, healed in their bodies, but not expressed gratitude from their hearts. 
     	We should never hesitate to give God the glory and the praise and the recognition and the thanksgiving when He touches us and heals us from all our infirmities. We should never be so caught up in our selves that we fail to offer Him our sincere and utmost gratitude as we are restored and we are once again returned to our communities, healed by the power of His Word. 
	This then leads us into the Apostle Paul’s admonition, in Rom 6:17+18, to give full voice to the fact that God is to be blessed and thanked for the truth and the fact of His glorious salvation of such as ourselves. All we deserved was death and eternal damnation. But God chose rather to save us unto Himself. We do not know why. We do not know, in any measure, the fullness of the love of God so poured out upon us at such a devastating cost to Himself. But we do know that He is worthy to be praised! He is worthy of the offering of every sacrifice of thanksgiving in the assembly of the elect. Rom 6:17+18, But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness… But thanks be to God…
	We are to give Him thanksgiving for the Word that He has given us and the teaching that we receive from it. Because of His Word, through the revealed witness of the Holy Spirit, we are taught those things that will cause righteousness to flourish within us. Not only does God save us unto Himself, but He makes the every provision to cause us to be freed from sin and to come into the freedom of His salvation in life in us through His Word. He speaks directly into our hearts as His Word causes us to flee from sin and to seek His righteousness and His work of obedience to His glory, day after day after day.
	Next, the Apostle, in Rom 7:24+25 describes what we all go through in our walk on this earth. We are so beset by the remnants of our old nature with all its cravings and its lusts after those things which God reveals as worthless and fruitless. We are to offer God complete thankfulness for the way in which He works to release us from that vile nature of bondage to sin. 
Rom 7:24+25, Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin. 
	We are in a constant battle between what we know we should do in serving God and the defiling covetousness of our old sinful nature after the lures and the worthless facades of this age. We are to thank God always that He gives us the grace and the strength and the wisdom to know the difference and to be empowered to face this battle under His control and in His victorious overcoming might. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
	Again, we have the Apostle’s support voiced in Col 2:6+7 to give God all thanksgiving for the fact that He is the One Who has given us the faith to go forward in this life. 
Col 2:6+7, As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. 
We grow in Christ, not because of our goodness and our worthiness and our efforts. It is all by the grace and the mercy and the love and the faith and the power of God! For that tremendous and awesome gift, He is to be thanked! Our normal spiritual development in Jesus is extreme cause to celebrate and to honor God with our sacrifices of gratitude in the full measure of being appreciative for His continued work in our lives. 
We are not just saved and then set on a shelf, so to speak. We are brought into a living relationship with God wherein we grow and we develop because of His marvelous working Hand upon and in us.
	As we read in Col 4:2, this spiritual development through the Hand of God upon our lives should be evidenced by our complete devotion unto God and our new attitude of absolute thankfulness that we belong to Him. Col 4:2, Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving… 
The course of our daily walk is to be seen as we are in continual communication with the source of our life and are indwelled with the full desire to express our gratitude for Him and for our life in Him. This should flavor our every interaction with others and be expressed in the moment by moment approach to the course of how we live our lives today. Our walk in Christ is to be filled with every attitude and natural essence of joy and thanksgiving that shows to the entire creation that we are a blessed child of the On High God.
	The Writer to the Hebrews, in Heb 13:15+16, reiterates this focal change of mind and attitude and understanding of our daily walk in Jesus Christ. Heb 13:15+16, Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name. And do not neglect doing good and sharing; for with such sacrifices God is pleased. 
Note, again, the same as voiced by the Prophet Hosea – God deserves the fruit of our lips that gives thanks to His name. Because we are filled with that heart that wants God to know just how fully blessed and thankful we are for His so amazing love to and in us, we treat others in the way that will please God in the measure of just how much He means to us. 
	This is so important as the measure of just how utterly Jesus has changed the very focus of our lives, that the Apostle Peter, in 1 Peter 2:1-5, not only reiterates this point, but expands it with the detailed emphasis of how we are to conduct our lives as being pleasing to God with acceptable sacrifices of thanksgiving unto Him. 
	1 Peter 2:1-5, Therefore, putting aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord. And coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected by men, but choice and precious in the sight of God, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Our spiritual growth in Christ will be evidenced by our bringing unto Him those free-will offerings of thanksgiving expressed in our public gathering and seen in the way we conduct ourselves with all those whom God places in our lives.
	In closing, then, hear how the Apostle Paul insists that we are to give God thanks for everything that He has wrought in our lives in a most familiar passage, 1 Thess 5:16-18. 1 Thess 5:16-18, Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. 
Our thanksgiving is a continual offering of our hearts and spirits and minds unto the Lord with gratitude and with rejoicing in Him. We do not always understand what He is doing and why He is doing it! But we can fully trust Him to always do His perfect will in our lives, and in that reality of His so great love, we can absolutely proclaim “Thank You Lord!” So be it.
	And when you sacrifice a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Lord, you shall sacrifice it so that you may be accepted. Amen.
This morning’s benediction is Neh 8:10. Then he said to them, "Go, eat of the fat, drink of the sweet, and send portions to him who has nothing prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength." Amen.