The Spirit says, “Do not be drunk.”

Oh, there is much drunkenness that fills the world during her celebrations. She eats, drinks, and is merry because tomorrow she dies! “Happy holidays” are the words that the worldlings often speak to one another. Their merrymaking will be an alcohol-driven and alcohol-filled merrymaking in celebration of the abundance of earthly things. They will fill themselves with spirits, and they will make merry in hearts filled with an evil spirit.

You could say that their merrymaking is totally unspiritual. But man is never without a spirit, whether the Spirit of Christ or an evil spirit. And when the heart is filled with an evil spirit and the body is full of alcoholic spirits, then the merrymaking is carnal. The worldlings’ merrymaking will be the celebration of merely outward success: a good year on the stock market, a good year in the field, a good year in business, a good year at home. To celebrate their earthly and carnal gains and to enjoy the only pleasures they have, they will fill themselves with spirits.

And consequently, their merrymaking will be full of fornication, uncleanness, covetousness, filthiness, and foolish jesting. It is a shame even to speak of the things that are done of them in secret. There is no thanksgiving in that merrymaking at all. The very form of the merrymaking, its inner power in the alcohol and its fruits of filthiness and uncleanness, shows clearly that there is no thanksgiving in their hearts. Do not be filled with those spirits, like wine and whiskey. Let it not be so much as is named among the saints.

Rather, give thanks with a Spirit-driven thanksgiving. Do not be filled with those spirits, but be filled with the Spirit, the Spirit of the living Lord Jesus Christ. The Spirit is the deep source of all proper thanksgiving. He is the drink that the Lord Jesus Christ provided for his people. He is the living water and the living spiritual drink of their thirsty souls. Whoever drinks of that drink, out of his belly will flow living waters. Be filled with that Spirit. Be filled then with all the fullness of God. Be filled with his grace. Drink deeply from Jesus Christ by faith and be filled with the Spirit and with grace and with all comfort.

The Spirit makes us sing. Sing and make melody in your hearts. Sing to one another. Oh, those filled with wine and whiskey and an evil spirit sing too. They sing the bawdy, worldly, wicked songs of the drunkards, who even make Christ the object of their mockery. They stammer and slur out their sensual, earthly, and devilish songs. Do not sing those things. Do not be filled with those spirits and do not sing those songs, but be filled with the Spirit and sing and make melody in your hearts to the Lord!

Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Speak to each other the words of these psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Singing is the spiritual activity of the thankful heart. That is part of the Christian’s proper merrymaking. Be filled with the Spirit of the risen and exalted Lord Jesus Christ. Drink deeply from him, drawing out of him as from the wells of salvation, and speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your hearts.

And that because we are thankful and already have the joy of heaven in our hearts. The Spirit inspires such joy and gives such a melody in our hearts and makes us thankful because he gives us a taste of the good things to come in glory. The thankful heart is the Spirit-filled heart. The thankful heart is the heart that sings and makes melody to the Lord. Thanksgiving is the constant Spirit-created melody of the believer’s heart. And so the Spirit in Ephesians 5:20 says to us, “Give thanks to God always.” That thanks is the form of the Christian’s whole life.

In your thanksgiving give thanks to God and the Father.

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow!

God and the Father is the source of all blessedness. He is also the reason for all thanksgiving. He is the one to whom all thanksgiving is given. Of God is everything. Through God is everything. To God is everything.

When the apostle says, “Give thanks to God,” he would have us to consider first God as God. God is God. Man is not God. Things are not God. Money is not God. Success is not God. Pleasure and enjoyment are not God. I am not God. You are not God. God is God!

God is highly exalted in his divine majesty and his perfect excellence. God is the blessed and only potentate, the king of kings and Lord of lords, who only has immortality and who dwells in the light that no man can approach unto, whom no man has seen nor can see, to whom be honor and power forever and ever. He is the God before whom the mighty angels hide their faces and before whom they cry out day and night without ceasing, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” The myriads of these mighty angels are God’s ministering servants who do his pleasure. God is the king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God.

God is God! God made the heavens and the earth, so that the heavens declare his glory, and the firmament shows forth his handywork. God gave life and breath, being and shape, and a place and an office to every creature to serve him. He made the grass, the trees, the rocks, and the mountains. He made the placid pond and the mighty oceans with their towering waves. He created every animal, from the tiniest microscopic organism to the great whales that play in the sea. He made all things, even the wicked for the day of evil.

God spoke a word, and it was done. He commanded, and it stood fast. God made the angels. God made man and brought this feeble creature out of the dust. God made man a little lower than the angels. In God all things live and move and have their being. Without him was not anything made that was made. God is God!

And all things are in God’s hand. He brought them into being, and he sovereignly gives them their existence from moment to moment, so that without him they would cease to exist. For his glory everything was brought into being. He created all things for the perfection of his eternal covenant in the new heavens and earth, for which purpose he also upholds and directs all creatures and the whole creation to its appointed end, and that according to his infinitely good and perfectly wise counsel. Nothing in heaven, on earth, or beneath the earth happens apart from his sovereign will. All things are the works of his hands. All things are decreed and carried out by him. All things—good and evil, fruitful and barren years, sickness and health, salvation and damnation, life and death, things present and things to come—are of him and through him and to him, to whom be glory forever. God is God alone. God is God over all.

And all of this God does out of his infinitely good being. He alone is good. He is in himself good and perfect. He is the only good and ever-blessed God. He gives life because he is life itself. He gives good and only does good because he is only good in himself. He is the overflowing fountain of all good. He is the living God. He is eternal, ceaseless, divine energy and activity, ever active and ever perfectly at rest. There is in God no struggle, no frustration, no disharmony, no pain, no sadness. He is life. He lives in himself and apart from the creature. And all his life is good.

God lives because he is the triune, covenant God. Oh, the apostle says, “Give thanks to the Father.” And the apostle means to God who is our Father. But when God reveals himself as our Father, that is because of who God is in himself apart from us. God is Father in himself. That he is Father in himself means that he is Son in himself. And that he is Father and Son in himself means that there is perfect love breathed between them. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit dwelling together in perfect and blessed family fellowship, in perfect love and perfect life. Three persons in one divine being. God begets and is begotten. God breathes and is breathed. The living, speaking, breathing eternal God.

And so that the creature might know God, be blessed in him, and participate in his blessed life of covenant fellowship, God made all things. The highest good for the creature is to know this God and to love, serve, and praise this God. That was Adam’s highest good. In God Adam lived. Apart from God Adam died. To live apart from God is death, death now and eternal death, regardless of the quantity of earthly pleasures enjoyed. All pleasure apart from God is death. All life apart from God is death. All activity apart from God is death.

And surely that is the state of the world in Adam. Adam departed from God and not only brought death on himself but also brought death to the entire human race, so that all men are in darkness and death reigns over all and the creation groans and travails under the immense weight of death.

The good God is good to all. Yes, he is ever good, perfectly good, doing and giving only good, also in this death-filled and sin-cursed world! His tender mercies are over all his works. That God is good means that he loves the righteous. It means that in love for the righteous he blesses the righteous always and in everything. That God is good also means that he hates the wicked. It means that he curses the wicked always and in everything. God is good to all, and thus all the wicked he will destroy. Fellowship with God is life, but enmity against God is terrible, for then the living God and the God of all things is your enemy, and it is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God. To bless the righteous with eternal life is God’s goodness. And to destroy the wicked with everlasting death is his goodness.

Give thanks to our good God and loving Father!

What is a Father? A Father begets you as a child. Having begotten you as a child, he seeks your eternal salvation all your life long. He does you good and not evil. He loves, comforts, instructs, builds up, encourages, and rebukes you, and he sees to your welfare. He is deeply moved by your distress and reaches out to you in his mercy to deliver you from your woes. He does that all out of love because you are precious and dear to him and because he desires to do you good all the days of your life and not evil. Such is a Father.

God is the Father. He is Father par excellence. He is the Father of Jesus Christ. The triune God is Christ’s Father. By the triune God Jesus Christ was begotten and appointed head over all. With the triune God Jesus Christ fellowships in a deep friendship of Father with his Son. All things were made by Christ and for Christ. He is the firstborn of every creature. He is the elect and the beloved of God. He is the eternal and natural Son of God.

In Christ God eternally set his love on his people. In tender pity and deep affection, God appointed his people to salvation and all the blessings of salvation and to all good. All things he has appointed for their good—every event, every circumstance, everything that he sends to them at all times is sent out of that eternal delight in them and for their eternal salvation. So he is not Father to all. He is not Father to the reprobate, whom he loathes. He is Father to his elect and to them only.

God is our gracious Father. His choice of his people was wholly gracious. There was nothing in them that commended them to the Father, not even their misery, for all were equally miserable and unworthy. He chose his people because it pleased him and delighted him so to do.

And out of that choice and for the carrying out of that choice to appoint his people to eternal salvation, the Father sends them all things. Always in love. Everything in love. Always for their good. Never for evil. Always with a view to their blessedness and never with a view to their damnation. All things, I say! Yes, God blesses his people with regeneration, conversion, faith, justification, sanctification, and glorification. And he blesses them in all their lives—whether sickness or health, whether fruitful years or barren, whether riches or poverty, whether life or death, whether things present or things to come—all things at all times he sends in his grace and for his people’s good, to carry out his eternal good pleasure for their salvation. Out of his love for them and in his eternal desire for their salvation, everything without exception comes to them from him, the Father of lights and the giver of every good and perfect gift, on the inexhaustible and living stream of divine grace, in order to embrace them by his grace in all things and to draw them ever nearer to himself, until finally he presents them without spot or wrinkle in the assembly of the elect in life eternal.

Oh, give thanks unto him and bless his name!

To return praise, glory, and honor unto him, from whom all blessings flow.

In thanksgiving we pay nothing back to God. He gives and gives and gives and overflows in goodness to his people. We pay nothing back. All we can do in thanksgiving is to draw ever more of his fullness and receive grace upon grace. We return nothing to him that is not already his. We give nothing to him that he does not already have. He is perfect in praise, perfect in glory, and perfect in blessedness. We must thank him that we can even thank him!

Give thanks to him! To be thankful is to acknowledge God as God and the Father and to acknowledge, therefore, that all things come from him and that they come from him in his grace and mercy and for our salvation.

Give thanks to him! To be thankful means to use what God gives to his glory. All things come from him not to be hoarded or abused but to be used for his glory.

Give thanks to him! To be thankful is to enjoy what God gives. Oh, yes, how unthankful would it be when he gives good gifts to his children that they would spurn those gifts and complain of them.

Give thanks to him! To be thankful is to receive with humble submission to his will all that God sends to you. With everything that you are, with all that you have, with all your being—with heart and mind and soul and body—and with all your substance give thanks unto him.

Always for everything.

Always be thankful. Let not a moment pass in unthankfulness.

Be thankful for everything. Surely, if we are to be thankful always, then this means to be thankful for everything.

Be thankful to God for his salvation given full and free to his beloved people. Always he is working out our salvation.

Be thankful to him in riches. Be thankful to him in poverty. Be thankful to him in health. Be thankful to him in sickness. Be thankful to him in fruitful years. Be thankful to him in barren years. For in everything and upon everything that he sends to his people, he sends his blessing, showers us with his favor, and works all for our eternal good.

Be thankful to him always and for everything. For he sends nothing upon us and gives nothing to us except what he has determined must serve our eternal salvation and welfare.

Give thanks in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. This means that you are in Christ. It must be so. Outside of Christ there is no thanksgiving because outside of Christ there is no grace, blessing, or salvation. Give thanks in Christ because he covers all sin and grants the forgiveness of sin to those in him. Especially does he forgive our unthankfulness, grumbling, and discontent! Especially does he forgive our God-forgetfulness. Especially does he forgive our oft carnality and all our abuse and waste of God’s gifts. Give thanks because you are Christ’s. Because you are Christ’s give thanks to God always and for everything. Christ Jesus is the great and perfect gift that God and the Father has given to us his people, so that belonging to Jesus Christ our savior, all things must be subservient to our salvation. In Christ nothing can harm us or take away from the promise of salvation that God gives to us. In Christ God sends all things in his love. In Christ nothing can separate us from the love of God. For in Christ, being justified by faith, we have peace with God!

Give thanks to God and the Father always and for everything because you are Christ’s and Christ is God’s. Thus you are God’s, and he is yours. In Christ you have God as your God.

In Christ you can, you may, and you will give thanks. In Christ you may give thanks to God. Man outside of Christ may not give thanks to God. Outside of Christ man only has a terrible and unpayable debt with the living God. And so all that man may do, if he would do anything at all, is to pay that debt. He cannot give thanks, but he must pay. And because he has sinned against the most high majesty of God, man has an infinite debt that he must pay temporally and eternally. Man outside of Christ can only daily increase his debt in all that he does, until at the end of his thankless and godless life, he goes to hell to pay his debt eternally. Always and in everything man has a debt with the living God, so that always and in everything man must pay. And he gives no thanks at all. And so outside of Christ, always and in everything, there is a terrible curse of God against man. And God comes against man always and in everything in his wrath, so that sickness and health, riches and poverty, fruitful years and barren—all things at all times—serve his damnation.

And sinful man outside of Christ cannot give thanks. With his wicked and black heart, with all things and at all times, he lives in God’s world in enmity against the living God. In riches he blasphemes and says, “Who is the Lord?” And in poverty he curses and says, “Where is God?” At all times and in all things, he cannot give thanks because of his sinful human nature. He is a slave to sin and hates the living God. Thus he will not give thanks either, not in anything ever. For he is devoid of the Spirit of Christ and full of sin and enmity against God. Oh, outside of Christ there is no thanksgiving at all. Man cannot, he may not, and he will not give thanks to God. Ever. For anything. For he is guilty before that God. He has no peace with that God. And he hates that God.

But in Christ. Oh, give thanks in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord because you belong to Jesus Christ; because God has chosen you in him; because God has redeemed you with his precious blood from all your sins and from all the power of the devil; because in Christ he is favorable toward you; because in Christ he has freed you from your terrible debt and delivered you from the punishment that your sins deserve; because in Christ he has earned for you perfect righteousness; because in Christ you are reconciled to God; because in Christ you are adopted as his children and heirs; because in Christ you are at peace with God; and so because in Christ all things at all times, good or bad, serve your salvation, give thanks in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Do not be filled with wine, wherein is excess. You can partake of that good gift of wine in your Christian merrymaking. You can use and enjoy in your joyfulness the good food that God gives to you. He gave oil to make man’s face to shine and wine to make glad his heart. But do not be filled with wine. Do not be drunk! Be filled with the Spirit of the living Lord Jesus Christ, by whose power we are saved and delivered. And by whose power we give thanks to God always for everything. Not only occasionally but at all times. Not only for things agreeable but also for things disagreeable. For in everything God is good to us because he was good to us in Christ to save us and to deliver us from our sins and to give us the promise of eternal salvation.