It is Good to Say "Thank You," a sermon based on Song of Solomon 2: 8-13 and James 1: 17-27, preached on October 20, 2024

You may know that men have a strange way of expressing their emotions. We don’t always know what to say, especially when love is involved, and so in our first Scripture lesson, this young man is standing behind a wall, looking through the lattice. What is he doing back there? Why doesn’t he just come out to tell this young woman how he feels? Maybe you know. Eventually, he gathers the courage to say: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away,” but that’s not easy for a man to say. It took me months to finally say it. Sara and I were in college together. It was a small school, Presbyterian College, with only 1,200 students. I fell in love with her the first or second time I saw her. Of course, I didn’t know how to tell her that. I couldn’t just come out and say it, so one day, I bought a medallion of beef jerky. I used to love beef jerky, and I bought that beef jerky shaped in the form of a medallion, and I chewed it into a heart, which I gave to her in the library. I’m surprised she didn’t report me to the campus police. I didn’t know how to say how I felt. Maybe you didn’t either. However, at some point, we all must come out from behind the wall to stop looking through the lattice. At some point, we take a leap, we step out to say what’s on our hearts, and no, it’s not always pretty, but it’s always beautiful when it’s love. Love is beautiful, and Bible scholars have been saying for years, since the time of the great Hebrew teachers in Babylon, that the Bible is the love story between God and humanity. Throughout history, God has declared His love to us, and Scripture records it. In the beginning, by speaking light into existence, God says to us, “I love you.” By creating this world for us to live in, By knitting us together in our mothers’ wombs and knowing the number of hairs on our heads, By breathing breath into our lungs, By saving us from slavery in Egypt, By speaking through the prophets when we’d lost our way, By giving us a life to live and a nation to live in, By offering His life on the cross that we would be saved, By dying, then rising, never giving up, loving us with an eternal love, We take the bread and wine and remember, yet all around us are God’s gifts. All around us are God’s declarations of love. God comes right out from behind the lattice to lay His heart on the line. How will we respond? Our daughter Cece left her sandwich on the counter last Wednesday morning. I ran down the driveway to give the sandwich to Sara who drove the sandwich down the street to Cece, who was walking to school. Sara handed Cece that sandwich, and Cece said, “Where’s my lunchbox?” Not, “Thank you.” Not, “I would have gone hungry without you.” But “Where’s my lunch box?” Now, our kids are not ungrateful. Our kids are wonderful. When Cece was in Kindergarten, she had to write an essay on her hero, and she wrote about me. That essay is three sentences long: “My dad is my hero. He built me a treehouse. That’s why he’s my hero,” and I will save that essay for the rest of my life because it feels so good to love someone with your whole heart and then to feel some of her love come back in the form of gratitude or acknowledgement. Parents know that. Grandparents know that. Boys who fall in love know that. How have you responded to God’s declarations of love? All around us, God has declared His love for us, but once God has come out to tell us that He loves us, once He’s stuck His head out from behind the lattice and stepped out from behind the wall to tell us that He would give His very life for us, how will we respond? Will we respond with a, “But where’s my lunch box?” For the fourth Sunday in a row, the book of James asks us the same question in plain terms: Are you doers of the word or merely hearers? Respond to God’s love with the religion that is pure and undefiled. Care for orphans and widows, just as God has cared for you. What happens to couples who stand up on their wedding day, making promises to each other that one keeps and the other doesn’t? What happens to friendships when one is always there yet the other makes excuses? What does it mean for us if God continues to pour His heart out to us, and we never respond? James says it plainly: Faith without works is dead. That’s what the book of James says because the author of this book of Scripture knows that faith, if it’s real, turns into something. Love, when it’s real, turns into something. When we feel it, we respond, and if we never respond, was anything there to begin with? I heard the most beautiful story last week. You may know that our own Jeff Knapp, when he heard that we were livestreaming our worship service into the Cobb County Jail, felt a calling to go and to get to know the men and women there. He started by feeding the jail staff. Then, he gathered up some volunteers, and together they restocked the jail library with more than 2,000 books. They’ve given out more than 500 Bibles. Clothed by the Spirit, Jeff trained to become a jail chaplain and is now leading Bible studies and praying with the men and women in the jail. His story is one of the most inspiring stories that our church has to tell, for he is living out his calling in a powerful way, giving up his time, and what is he receiving in return? Last week, he led a study with eight men, and when it ended and Jeff got up to leave, one of the men stopped him, saying that they wanted to thank him for all that he’s given them, and together, with the guard on duty, those incarcerated men began to sing. Who could imagine so great a mercy? What heart could fathom such boundless grace? The God of ages stepped down from glory To wear my sin and bear my shame. The cross has spoken, I am forgiven The King of kings calls me His own. Beautiful Savior, I’m yours forever. Jesus Christ, my living hope. That’s what they sang. All they had was a song, but that was more than enough. What do you have to give? Have you taken the time to thank God for what He has given you? My friends, take this card, fill it out, and may this act of returning to God a portion of what He provided you be a sign of your gratitude. For it is good to say, “Thank you.” Amen.