Eternal Thanksgiving Psalm 103:8-14, NIV The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust. Hallelujah! I would like to share the grace of God under the title, “Eternal Thanksgiving,” based on Psalm 103:8-14. Would you please repeat after me? “Eternal Thanksgiving.” We are the happiest people on earth. That is because we have become the children of God by believing in Jesus. The grace of salvation is not comparable with anything else. Nothing is a greater blessing, a greater miracle, greater grace, or greater happiness than becoming the children of God through Jesus. Therefore, we must live a life of thanksgiving after believing in Jesus. True thanksgiving should not be conditional. We must give thanks to God in all circumstances, whatever happens, wherever we are, and at all times. We must give absolute, unconditional, and eternal thanks to the Lord. Thanksgiving is one of the characteristics of mature Christians. If you complain over trivial things, you may be at the beginner’s level in Christianity. Therefore, I pray that your faith will grow by giving unconditional thanks to the Lord and that you will enjoy abundant grace and blessings of the Lord. The God we believe and serve is truly a good God. Such a good God is our God, and we are His children. How can we not thank God? Therefore, we must open our mouths and give thanks to God in all circumstances. I pray that your life will be a life of eternal thanksgiving. What kind of God do we believe and serve? First, God is compassionate. Psalm 103:8 says, “The LORD is compassionate.” We must give thanks to the Lord who sees us with compassion. What is compassion? To have compassion means to have the same feeling and to understand exactly. God knows the exact situation we are in by standing in our position. He has mercy on us. We must give thanks to the Lord for His wonderful grace and His compassionate love. The Lord knows what we need. He knows how weak we are. He also knows what we desperately desire. He is compassionate. He has mercy on us. That is why we need to approach Him with thanksgiving. Psalm 103:13-14 says, “As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.” He knows how we are formed, and He remembers that we are dust. We are like grass. Our life sometimes may look splendorous and beautiful. However, just as grass withers quickly, we are likely to become weary and tired due to many problems in life. We will get old and weak, eventually yielding to hopelessness and death. God knows how weak humankind is. When Jesus was on earth, He chose His disciples, taught them, and worked with them. When He talked about His suffering on the night before He was crucified, all His disciples emphatically said that they would never leave Him. Peter went even further and said, “Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will.” He could have saved face if he had remained silent. Even though he was so confident, he followed Jesus from a distance and denied Him three times. Jesus, however, knew their weakness. He knew it very well. He knew that they all would disown Him and run away. Even though He knew it, He went to His disciples, comforting, forgiving, and having compassion on them. He has the same compassion on us. We live each day thanks to His great grace and compassion on us. We must always give thanks to the Lord for His grace upon us. Since He knows how we are formed and how weak we are, he has compassion on us. We are adopted as the children of God thanks to this compassion and grace of the Lord. When we look at ourselves, we are not qualified for salvation. Nonetheless, the Lord had compassion us and made us the children of God. His grace has made us what we are. We can live a blessed and victorious life in His grace. He has compassion us, loving us more than parents love their children. Isaiah 49:15 says, “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!” “Even though a mother may forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne, I will not forget you. I will never forsake you. I will love you forever.” Hallelujah! One day two blind men were sitting by the roadside when Jesus was going by them. They shouted for His mercy. Jesus looked at them and felt compassionate, because they had to beg throughout their lives, because they were blind. So He opened their eyes. Matthew 20:30 says, “Two blind men were sitting by the roadside, and when they heard that Jesus was going by, they shouted, ‘Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!’ ” They said to Jesus, “Have mercy on us!” The Lord had mercy on them and opened their eyes. Martha and Mary wept bitterly when their brother Lazarus, who had been like parents to them, died. Jesus saw them weeping and had compassion on them. John 11:33 says, “When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.” So He raised Lazarus from the dead. The Lord also had compassion on a widow in a town called Nain whose only son had died. He raised him from the dead. The Lord had mercy on those who came to him with diseases and problems. He healed them, solved their problems, and blessed them. Five thousand men gathered in a remote town called Bethsaida, listened to Jesus all day long, and became hungry at dusk. There must have been twenty to thirty thousand people, including women and children. He had mercy on them and fed them all with only five loaves of barley bread and two fish. The Lord looks at us with great compassion. When He has compassion and mercy on us, the blessings and miracles of God will take place. Copernicus, a great Polish astronomer in the Sixteenth Century, asked people to write the following on his tombstone, “God, I do not ask for the privileges that Apostle Paul had. I do not ask for the power that Apostle Peter had. I only ask for the compassion that Jesus had on the criminal who hung next to Him.” Hallelujah! Since God had compassion on us, He sent Jesus, His one and only Son, to earth. Jesus took all our sin, curses, and diseases and died on the Cross. Thanks to God’s grace and compassion for us, we are saved. We have become the precious children of God. Therefore, we are living a blessed life now. I urge you to come to the Lord and ask for His compassion, saying, “Lord, have compassion on me. Have mercy on me. I cannot solve this problem in my own strength. I am weary and tired. I am about to give up. Lord, have mercy on me and help me.” Then the Lord will start working for us. The Lord will have compassion on us. The God whom we believe in and serve is compassionate. Second, the Lord is gracious. The Scripture says in Psalm 103:8, “The LORD is compassionate and gracious” What is grace? It is a gift from God, free of charge. We have received salvation as a free gift. We did not pay anything for it. We are not saved because we have done good works. While we were sinners, the Lord had mercy on us and died on the Cross for us. Whoever believes in Him, repenting of his sin, will receive free salvation. It is all thanks to His grace that we are here today. 1 Corinthians 15:10 says, “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them?yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.” Paul said, “It is the grace of God that was with me.” Even though he worked very hard, achieving great things, Paul knew that it was the grace of God that was with him. I pray that you will live a blessed life in the abundant grace of God throughout your life. The Lord will be with you on each winding path of your life. He will pour His grace on you, strengthen you, and bless you so that you will prosper in everything you do. God prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies. Psalm 23:5 says, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.” My cup overflows. My cup overflows! When does this grace fall on us? We can have this grace when we are filled with the Holy Spirit. When we do not have the experience of the Holy Spirit, we sometimes come to church without being touched. We sometimes just come and go. However, when we have the experience of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit touches our heart so strongly that we receive God’s blessings as we sing hymns, pray, listen to the sermons, come into church, and go out of the church. Hallelujah! Our life will be totally different. Ms. Bong-hwa Lee, the former deputy secretary of the Department of Social Securities and Health, came to the monthly worship service of the Kukmin Vision Club. We were sitting at the same table. She was crying throughout the service. Actually, she was the only one who was crying. She looked very blessed. She started her career as a public service worker. She was very successful and was promoted rapidly to become the deputy secretary of the Department of Social Securities and Health. A government subsidy for rice farming scandal broke out in 2008. The government subsidy for rice farming is the government-paid compensation money for rice farmers to encourage rice farming, because rice farming is not profitable. Anyone who is actually involved in rice farming is entitled to this compensation. The problem was that there were those who received this compensation money without getting involved in rice farming, only because they owned the land. Ms. Lee had purchased some land in the country so that her family may settle and farm there after retirement. Her husband went there and raised rice crops. Various media found that she received compensation money and attacked her without researching her case. She had to resign from her position. She was furious at people’s unlawful treatment of her. Reporters came and bothered her, writing that she was unethical. In such a time of hopelessness, she sought the Lord. When she was little, her grandmother and her uncle were faithful Christians. She remembered going to church, taking her uncle’s hand. So she came back to the Lord. She started crying from the moment she met the Lord again. Therefore, sometimes, suffering is beneficial. That is because we can come to the Lord through suffering. Thanks to the grace of God, she had been successful in her career, but she did not know it. When suffering came, however, she knelt down before God and prayed. Now, she cries when she sings hymns or prays. She cannot listen to sermons without crying. She watches Christian TV sermons. She listens to CDs of hymns and sings along when she drives. She listens to sermons of famous preachers on the Internet. Hallelujah! She is now a member of Olympic Church. She said to me, “Pastor, I often listen to your sermons on the Internet. God blesses me through your message.” She yearns for the grace of the Lord. Our God is the Lord of grace. He is our Father who is full of grace. He blesses those who are suffering and restores their faith. He will convert His people back to Him. He will lead us into even greater grace. Without experiencing the grace of God, we cannot give thanks to Him. How did Thanksgiving Day begin? In 1620, the Pilgrims boarded the ship called the Mayflower and left England for America in search of their freedom of faith. They sailed for 65 days. They arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts, on the northeastern shore of the American continent. It was very cold in the winter. Many people died during their voyage of cold or hunger. I went to Plymouth while I was living in the United States. It is in a colder part of the nation. It is as cold there as it is in Shinuijoo of Korea. They arrived at Plymouth in late fall and built a church. When spring came, they plowed the land and planted some seeds. Since they were not farmers, they were not good at farming. With help from the native Indians, they gathered a small harvest in the fall. Even though it was small, they thanked God for the harvest. They thanked God for their freedom of faith. They invited the native Indians and had a thanksgiving feast for three days. This was the first Thanksgiving. They cooked wild turkeys for their Thanksgiving harvest. They also brought crops they gathered. They worshipped the Lord with thanksgiving. Starting from this tradition, Americans observe and celebrate Thanksgiving Day in late November. They bake turkeys and cook various old-fashioned dishes according to this tradition. President Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving Day as a national holiday, to be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of every November. He proclaimed this day when the Civil War was the fiercest. He was proclaiming thanksgiving in times of trouble and despair. People celebrate Thanksgiving Day as the biggest holiday in the United States. On Thanksgiving Day, the fourth Thursday of November, families get together and worship the Lord. What has enabled America to achieve such wonderful growth and prosperity? It is in their thanksgiving hearts. American culture is a culture of thanksgiving. They say, “Thank you,” on almost all occasions. They say, “Thank you,” when they buy goods. Then the sellers also say, “Thank you.” God has blessed America for their spirit of thanksgiving. I pray that you will live a life of thanksgiving. Thank the Lord, saying, “Father, I thank You. I give thanks to You.” Then you will receive more grace and blessings. Give thanks to the Lord? even if you have problems right now. Give thanks to the Lord?even if you are sick or in a painful situation. Your thanksgiving will bring miracles to your life. Third, the Lord is slow to anger. We must give thanks to the Lord even more, for He is slow to anger. Psalm 103:8-9 says, “The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever.” God endures forever. He bears with us over and over again. Since God is just, He detests sin. If God had to punish humankind for each sin, human history would have been severed so many times. He would have to destroy humankind and then create it again?repeatedly. Thanks to His patience with us, we exist here today. Exodus 34:6 says, “And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, "The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.” God is patient. When our children are rebellious, we sometimes say to ourselves, “Where does this kid come from?” Of course, your child came from you! Despite all things, we forgive and love our children. The same is true with God. He is patient with us over and over again. We need to follow His example and be patient with each other. We should not easily lose our temper. Some people are hot tempered. When such a person is angry, losing his temper, anyone who is near him is deeply hurt. He would say, “I may be short tempered but I also easily forget.” What happens to the others he has hurt? What happens to his family who has to put up with him for the rest of his life? Some are introverts and easily hurt. By the time they barely manage their hurt, this short-tempered guy explodes again, saying, “I easily forget.” It happens repeatedly. I pray that you will control your temper, because your hot temper hurts other people. Let us think about Moses. He took millions of Israelites from Egypt to the entrance of Canaan, going through so much toil and trouble. However, he could not enter into the land, because he lost his temper. When the people opposed Moses because there was no water, he became furious. Moses said to them, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” Even though the Lord had told him to speak to the rock, he struck it twice with his staff. Numbers 20:11-12 says, “Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank. But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.’ ” Because Moses lost his temper only once, he could only look at Canaan from a distance but could not enter it. We must control our temper. Proverbs 29:22 says, “An angry man stirs up dissension, and a hot-tempered one commits many sins.” Who was the most patient person? It was Jesus. He endured the suffering on the Cross. Hebrews 12:2 says, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Be patient and endure. God will bless you. The following is a story about Mr. Suk-hun Ham. He graduated from Law School, Tokyo University. He once taught students at Osan High School, his alma mater. One day rebellious students swarmed into the teachers’ lounge. They had some conflict with one of the teachers. They came to protest, but the teacher was not in the lounge. Mr. Ham was there, but he bowed down his head. Some students mistook him for the teacher they had come after and began to beat him. When they found out that they had beaten the wrong teacher, they were startled and apologized. They asked, “Teacher, why did you bow down your head and get beaten instead?” Mr. Ham replied, “If I had opened my eyes and recognized you, how could I teach you in class? And how could you face me later?” He was tolerating the rebellious students and forgave them. Touched by his noble character, they knelt down and asked for his forgiveness. They never rebelled again. If he had hit back at them, it would have brought no change in their lives. They would have kept rebelling against teachers. When Mr. Ham forgave them with love, they were impressed and renewed. When we endure with patience, miracles will take place. Blessings will come. When Jesus was crucified, He never blamed those who nailed Him. He forgave them. Following His example, we need to tolerate one another with patience. Forth, the Lord is abounding in Love. Please repeat after me, “God forgives our sin.” Psalm 103:10-11 says, “He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him.” Our Lord is the God of forgiveness. He does not even remember our sins that we have repented of. David’s prayer of tears after he had committed a huge sin is written in Psalms. He cried and prayed to God in repentance. Psalm 51:1-3 says, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.” “My sin is always before me.” When David repented of his sin with bitter cries, God forgave him. Psalm 103:2 says, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” Our Lord does not remember the sin that we have repented of. He forgives us, makes us His precious children, and comforts us. We have been born again as the children of God through the love and forgiveness of our Lord. Therefore we have to forgive each other. We have to love each other. We should not hate, fight, or quarrel with each other. I was deeply impressed when I read the book, Forgiveness, by Missionary George Senter. George Senter was a Southern Baptist missionary who was working in Yekepa, Liberia. His wife and their 10-year-old daughter, Rachel, were home alone on the night of November 25, 1986. Benjamin Morris, who was a local helper, entered their house and killed the wife and daughter of the missionary. Morris tried to kill himself but survived. He was arrested and taken to the police station. Missionary Senter heard this horrible news and rushed back. Outside of the police station, more than 500 angry people gathered around and shouted for the death sentence on the murderer. Missionary Senter must have been full of agony, anger, and hatred. His bitterness was even greater since the murderer was his helper whom they took good care of. His pain must have been beyond description. However, Missionary Senter knew the love and forgiveness of the Lord. He met Benjamin Morris at the police station and had compassion on him. He put his hand on the man’s shoulder and said, “Benjamin, God loves you and wants to forgive you if you'll let Him. With God's help, I forgive you, too.” The missionary’s gentle treatment of a disturbed man who had wronged him became a powerful Christian witness across Liberia. The wave of forgiveness covered the whole of Liberia. People who used to be filled with hatred and resentment heard of Senter’s forgiveness and were reconciled to each other. Churches that had been split were united again. Enemies received each other with open arms. One person’s forgiveness moved the whole country. Salvation is given to all humankind since Jesus showed the perfect example of forgiveness on the Cross. If we forgive one another, the world will turn into a beautiful place. It will be renewed. We do not forgive one another. We do not have room in our hearts. At a hearing in the United States, they usually question the policies of a candidate. In Korea, however, they question a candidate’s private life. It seems that nobody can come out clean from such hearings. It only deepens hatred. We need to be united with love and forgiveness. We need overflowing love and forgiveness in political realms, in our workplaces, schools, and homes. American author, Mark Twain, once said, “Forgiveness is the fragrance that a violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.” Just as a violet sheds its fragrance on the heels of those who crush it, our forgiveness has wonderful power to change those who have hurt us. The teachers of the Law and the Pharisees brought to Jesus a woman caught in adultery. They were holding stones. They said to Jesus, “In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. They wanted to see what Jesus would say. He said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” At this, they realized that they also had hidden sins. They began to go away one at a time putting down their stones. Soon there were only stones left around her. Then Jesus said to her in John 8:11, “Then neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin.” Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Who has hurt you? Who has caused you trouble? Look unto the Lord Jesus and forgive them. You can be healed from hatred, pain, and anger in your heart?only when you forgive other people. As long as you have hatred and anger in your heart, you cannot be completely free. When you have wounds in your heart, they will keep hurting you. If we fail to forgive one another, even though God has forgiven us unconditionally, we should be ashamed of ourselves. I urge you to forgive each other. Be sensitive to sin. As Jesus told the woman to leave her life of sin, we must leave our old life of sin. We should live as a new creation now that we are forgiven. I want you to experience the grace of forgiveness and live a life of thanksgiving, enjoying freedom and joy. What kind of God are we believing in and serving? He is the God of infinite compassion. He is gracious. He is slow to anger. He forgives our sins. I pray that you will forgive each other. I also pray that you will enjoy God’s enormous grace and blessings by forgiving each other. This is my earnest prayer for you in the Lord. Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father of infinite love, grace, and mercy, pour Your grace on us so that we will live a victorious life of thanksgiving and forgiveness on this Thanksgiving Sunday. As You have mercy on us, are patient with us, and forgive us with Your abundant grace, help us to be patient, forgive, and love one another. I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.