[AI translation] We are gathered for a service of thanksgiving on the last night of this year. What else can we do in the last hours of a fleeting year but fill our souls with thanksgiving to the Lord and pour out to His glory! For even if we look back over the events of a single day or week, how much cause for joyful thanksgiving we find, let alone over the events of a whole year! There is not a man in the world who, if he knows anything about the heavenly Father, does not have something to give thanks for on New Year's Eve!In the Word that is read, the psalmist is urging his soul to open itself to praise God! He does not say, "Let my lips bless the Lord," but thus: "Bless, O my soul, the Lord, and my whole being bless his holy name". Thanksgiving is not just about clasping my hands together and giving thanks. It's more than that: it's an attitude, a spiritual warmth that permeates my whole being, a temperature of the heart - which, when one then wants to express in the form of thanks, one feels that only a very small fraction of it can fit into the words spoken! The heart is filled with gratitude at the sight of the good deeds that are given as gifts. So let us recall in our memory the divine good deeds that have made us all feel in our hearts the thanksgiving of the Lord who has brought us to this point! Even the passing moments urge us, before the great hourglass that is left runs down, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not his good deeds." (verse 2).
Let us stick to this word, good deed, God's good deed! Has there been one in your life in the past year? Surely you have! How good it would be to sit here with paper and pencil and write down and count all the good deeds the Lord, the loving Father, has done for you in the last 365 days! If we really wanted to do this here, it would show how little we keep track of God's good deeds, how little we remember them, which shows how easily we can get caught up in them! We do not forget the troubles, the sufferings, the sad hours so quickly, such memories are still vivid in us years later! How right the Word is when it warns, "Forget not the good things of God! Forgetting God's good deeds is ingratitude to the God who gave them! But He expects nothing from us for His good deeds but thanksgiving! Nor does He desire it for Himself, but for us, for our sake. His glory will be nothing the poorer for our lack of gratitude, but our joy over His good deeds all the more! But we often deprive ourselves of the joy of thanksgiving!
There is an Eastern legend which speaks of two angels. One was an angel of supplication, the other of thanksgiving. Both had the task of collecting the prayers of the people on earth and taking them up to God. Both held a basket in their hands for this purpose. The angel of supplication's basket was soon so full that he could hardly carry it, and the angel of thanksgiving's was almost empty. Unfortunately, it is not only the story, but the reality! On your lips and on my lips, there is much more pleading and begging than thanksgiving! Spurgeon, the famous English evangelist, says that supplication and thanksgiving belong together like the two lips of the mouth. The two together are like two bells, whose unison sounds sweetly in God's ear.
"Forget no good deed," the Word says. So let us see, what were those good deeds? It depends on whether you can see things and events with the eyes of faith. If not, then you will be done with the list very soon, because then only those outstanding, exceptional, great events will be included, which have been a joy, a relief, a gift in your life, like little oases in the monotony of the desert! Then, for example, only the recovery of someone you prayed for, the sign of life from a distant stranger of a loved one you thought was dead, the fulfilment of an old wish you had longed for, and so on, count as good deeds. Without faith, only what the world generally calls good fortune counts as divine good fortune! Try for once to take those things which we take so much for granted and for granted, not so much for granted and for granted: all at once the good things of God multiply before your eyes. Nor is the mere fact that you are here now in this church and not somewhere else, in an unpleasant or dangerous place, self-evident. Nor is it self-evident that you can hear the sermon and sing the psalm. Nor does it go without saying that you had lunch today, nor that you have a coat to protect your body and shoes on your feet. Nor does it go without saying that when you turn on the tap, drinkable, refreshing, clean water comes out, nor that your child giggles at you - and I could go on and on.
Well, what you take so much for granted in your life: it's all a gift, a divine good deed. "For what is there that you have not received?" From God, the Word asks in another part of the Bible (1 Cor 4:7). If the Lord then takes away one of these seemingly self-evident good things of God, how can we grumble about it, when we never gave thanks for it while we had it! God must often take something from us to teach us to give thanks! Do you know where true gratitude to God begins? It is there that you begin to see even the dominant order, the affairs, the things, the so-called grey events of your life, not as something to be taken for granted, as something natural, but as a very wonderful gift, an undeserved good deed! Behold, how many blessings, how many precious gifts, how many undeserved good deeds the past year has been full of! If you were to record them all, forgetting no good deed, the time left of this year would not be enough. If you wanted to bless God for all this, you would never have time to complain because of all the thanksgiving. And that is indeed the case: The more gifts I thank the Lord for, the more I have to thank Him for again!
But let us now go further in our examination of God's good deeds. For all that we have talked about so far - whether we have thought of it before or not - we now see that we owe God thanks. But this past year has not been the only time for such thanksgiving! What should the person do now who has had some great disappointment in the old year? How can the soul be filled with gratitude who has had the saddest experience of his life this year? Should the person from whom God has taken a child this year, or the partner in his life on whom God has laid a seemingly unbearable cross, bless God? Oh, how many people come to church on New Year's Eve with some new cross! Well, my brethren, the highest form of thanksgiving is that which the writer of Psalm 119 has put it thus, "It is good for me that thou hast humbled me, that I might learn thy statutes." (v. 71), and continued, "I know, O Lord, that thy judgments are righteous, and thou hast justly afflicted me." (verse 75) So the eye of faith sees God's goodness in the cross! When the Word now calls you, "Forget not the good deeds of God," do not forget one of His many good deeds, the cross that He has placed on you, your sufferings! Even if you don't know why God has done to you what hurts you so much, it is enough to know that He has done it, and that is reason enough to give thanks, for He never does anything by mistake. How many times has it turned out that one of the sufferings, disappointments, pains of our lives was the envelope in which God sent us heavenly banknotes! Do not reject the envelope: you cannot know what is inside! Whatever painful memories of the past year you bring with you, give thanks now. Every rebellious heart finds a way of reconciliation with God in thanksgiving!
Thanksgiving is a wonderful thing: it is the best tool against failure, fear, self-pity! Try to bless the Lord with a thankful heart - but "forget nothing of his good deeds"! You will see how happy a life of gratitude is! And above all, we have not even mentioned the greatest good deed of all, the chief cause for gratitude! The heart is truly filled with gratitude to God when it accepts the grace which the psalmist expresses in the continuation of our basic hymn: "He forgives all your sins, heals all your diseases... redeems your life from the grave; crowns you with mercy and grace." (Psalm 103:3-4)
The only thing that could spoil the joyful mood of our thanksgiving on the eve of the New Year is to think of our sins and omissions throughout the year! Oh, but the past year is full of them too! Who can list the words, the deeds, the thoughts, the emotions, that have made a mockery of this commandment, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind... Love your neighbor as yourself." (Mt 22:37-39) Most of it we have forgotten, but the burden of it is still felt involuntarily on New Year's Eve, as another year of our lives has passed. Who knows how far we have come to the moment when we must appear before the judgment seat of Christ for the great reckoning! It is in vain for the soul to flee into a merry revelry on New Year's Eve, but wine cannot wash away the sins that will one day be called to account as a heavenly debt.
But if you are really burdened with this debt, if you really want to be free of it, there is something that will erase all the incriminating data not only from your memory, but - more importantly - from the memory of the Lord God, like when a tablet is wiped off with a sponge, so that its place is no longer visible: the blood of Jesus Christ! For his sake, for Jesus' sake, it is possible for God to forgive all your sins, even what you no longer remember, your whole sinful nature - "crowning you with grace and mercy." He crowns you as if you had conquered all sin, as if you had never had any debt! At the sight of so great a good deed, can one do but bless with joy, and lavish thanks on the God who declares that, even after all that has happened in the year behind us, "He will not deal with us according to our iniquities, nor pay us according to our transgressions". (v.10) So now God offers you His redeeming love, His forgiving grace, His peace of Himself: accept it, simply accept it, thank Him with great, humble gratitude. Say: thank you, Lord!
Whose heart is now full of gratitude, may he turn his back on the year that is drawing to a close, and go into the new one reconciled. Brothers and sisters, God is here among us, invisible but real! Let us be silent before Him, blessing the Lord in our own souls, remembering with gratitude His good deeds!
Amen.
Date: 31 December 1948 (New Year's Eve).