Summary
Giving Thanks for Our Yesterdays
Scripture's call to thanksgiving is pervasive and persistent. "It is good to give thanks to the LORD" Psalm 92:1, and Paul urges believers to "be thankful" Colossians 3:15. Thanksgiving cannot be confined to a single day on the calendar; it is meant to permeate the whole of the Christian life. As one launching point, Joshua 4 shows us how God's people are taught to give thanks for their yesterdays.
When Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground—a miracle echoing the parting of the Red Sea—the Lord commanded Joshua to have twelve men, one from each tribe, take twelve stones from the riverbed and set them up where the people camped Joshua 4:1-7. The stones served two purposes: a memorial reminding Israel of what God had done, and a teaching tool for the next generation. When children asked, "What do those stones mean?" parents would retell the goodness of God—and in the telling, the parents themselves were blessed again. Scripture is full of such stone-pillars of remembrance, from Jacob at Bethel Genesis 35:14-15 to Samuel's Ebenezer, "Thus far the LORD has helped us" 1 Samuel 7:12.
Thanksgiving comes easily for the bright yesterdays—the conflict resolved, the problem solved, the promotion gained, the healing received. These are stones we set up gladly in our minds. But what about the harder yesterdays? The phone call in the night, the loss of a loved one, the conflict that grinds on like a rock in the shoe—what do we do with those?
Paul writes that we are to give thanks "always and for everything" Ephesians 5:20. Yet the same apostle catalogues beatings, stonings, and shipwrecks 2 Corinthians 11:24-25 without ever pretending these horrors were themselves wonderful. As R.C. Sproul observed, Paul did not pause after recounting the lashes and say, "Wasn't that delightful?" The Ephesians passage sits in the context of the worship life of the congregation and the gifts of God—it does not bind a grieving believer to give thanks for the tragedy itself. God places no such cruel yoke upon his people.
What we can give thanks for is how God picks up the pieces of our shattered lives, how he uses hard providences to teach us deeper dependence on him, and how he reveals his graciousness precisely where we are weakest. Thanksgiving emerges from all our yesterdays—not because every event was good, but because God is good in every event. In Colossians, Paul prays that the saints would be "strengthened with all power…for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father" Colossians 1:11-14, and he grounds that thanks in a particular yesterday: the Father has rescued us from darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
That is the yesterday that anchors all the others. The cross of Jesus Christ—where our sin was atoned for, where the wrath of God was borne by the Son, where his righteousness was given to us—is the great memorial stone of the Christian. The yesterday of Christ crucified and risen forms the meaning of every other day we have lived and will live. So we set up our stones and remember, embracing thanksgiving for Yesterday — not only for the good days, but for what God has done and continues to do with all the others.
Video citations
- "Yesterday" 11-7-21 — Would you open your Bibles, please, with me this morning, to the book of Joshua in the Old Testament, the fourth chapter, if you're using a Pew edition of Holy Scripture, you're going to find that…