With Hearts and Hands and Voices / Deuteronomy 8:1-10 / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday October 12th 2025/ Thanksgiving / Mount Olive Lutheran Church

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday October 12th 2025: Season of Pentecost - Thanksgiving Sunday / Deuteronomy 8:1-10 “With Hearts and Hands and Voices”

“The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the LORD swore to give to your fathers. And you shall remember the whole way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that He might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. And He humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. Your clothing did not wear out on you and your foot did not swell these forty years. Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the LORD your God disciplines you.

So you shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God by walking in His ways and by fearing Him. For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land He has given you.

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Good Christian friends, it’s a bit of a conundrum that when good things are happening you’ll still find some people who are complaining and yet it’s perhaps an even more perplexing thing to find thankful people in the midst of very bad things happening. Have you managed to find complaint in the midst of everyone’s thanksgiving? Is this you? Or are you the one who in the midst of genuinely terrible circumstances finds a way to pray, praise and give thanks to God the Father for all His benefits, all of His gifts and His mercies especially during times of struggle and hardship?   

It was a bad thirty years, and in that bad thirty years (1618 - 1648) there were two really bad years (1636-1637). In 1636 the son of a poor coppersmith lived in the German walled city of Eilenburg, his name was Martin Rinckart and he was born in 1586. Baptised as a child into the Lutheran Church he had grown up to be a Lutheran Pastor. By 1636 the war had already been going for 18 years, Martin had been 32 when it started and now he was 50 years old and it still went on; only it had gotten worse for him. A Swedish Army was encamped outside the city and many, many people from the country side had come into the city to seek escape from the Swedes. The city, about 20 km northeast of the city of Leipzig, was quickly overcrowded and filled with a severe plague, there wasn’t enough food for everyone and starvation was setting in. At the beginning of the year, there had been four Lutheran Pastors – they were the only clergy in the city; But eventually as the year progressed, Martin was left all alone to care for the people. One of the other pastors snuck away and ran off and couldn’t be persuaded to return, the other two died and it looked as if Martin Rinckart stood alone, in 1636 and 1637 Pastor Rinckart was recorded as having conducting as many as 50 funerals a day at some points: all in all he performed more than 4000 funerals in the year 1637 alone, including that of his own wife. It was a profoundly hard and dismal time and yet in the midst of his trouble, in the midst of the trouble that had befallen the city of Eilenburg, this Pastor Rinckart wrote what would become the hymn “Now Thank We All Our God,”[1] the hymn we’ll sing at the end of the Divine Service this morning. It started its life as a table grace, before having music attached to it,[2]  but that it would end up as a hymn is not that unexpected Pastor Rinckart was a very musical man before becoming a pastor he was a cantor and he’d sang in the Divine Service to help with the liturgy.[3]

When Martin’s parents had him baptised as an infant, they had no idea what was ahead of him in his life: they had no idea that war would break out just after he’d been ordained and placed as a Lutheran Pastor in Eilenburg and neither did Martin ... and neither do you ... we like Pastor Rinckart don’t know what life has in store for us. And because we don’t know this commonly leads in two directions for most people: Trust and/or Anxiety. And so the distinction I pointed out at the beginning of the sermon comes at us again. Which sort of Christian are you in the face of trouble and hardship? Do you embrace what comes at you looking forward to whatever comes your way, or do you fear and worry about it all, about what is happening in the moment, about what might happen? Can you “Rejoice always,” Can you, “pray without ceasing,” can you “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you,” as Saint Paul writes in 1st Thessalonians.[4]

Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done, in whom His world rejoices;
Who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.[5]

Our Old Testament Reading points back to the dramatic rescue of the Children of Israel recorded in Exodus 14 from their captivity in Egypt when it references the Lord leading them for 40 years in the wilderness. Exodus chapter 14 tells how the Lord guides the children of Israel through the Red Sea on dry ground; this is the chapter where they are miraculously given escape from the pursuing Egyptians who had enslaved them for 400 years. No sooner had the Children of Israel been saved than they began to complain about and criticize everything around them ... the water was too bitter, they didn’t have their favorite foods, they wished to be slaves again even though the Lord had just given them their freedom through works of wonder.

And so in today’s Old Testament Reading from Deuteronomy,[6] Moses records a brief history of the Love of God for the Children of Israel, one of the points within this brief history is the recounting of how “[The Lord] humbled [them] and let [them] hunger and fed [them] with manna, which [they] did not know, nor did [their] fathers know, that [God] might make [them] know that Man does not live by bread alone, but Man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.” And if you know the whole account of the Children of Israel’s time in the wilderness you’ll remember that they eventually “became impatient on the way. [They] spoke against God and against Moses, [saying] “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we [hate this horrible manna!].”[7] They gave no thanks for the Bread of Heaven that they received without working for it, they couldn’t seem to remember that the Lord fed them out of Love and that God made sure that their “clothing did not wear out” and that their “foot did not swell [those] forty years,” while they were being disciplined in the wilderness. Even in the midst of what they considered trouble God was providing for them and was always near them. 

Oh may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts and blessèd peace to cheer us;
And keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed;
And free us from all ills, in this world and the next![8] 

In our Gospel Reading from the Gospel of Saint Luke we heard how Jesus healed the ten lepers and how only one came back to praise the Lord and give thanks. To the one who came back with praise Jesus said, “Rise go your way; your faith has made you well.”[9] All ten were healed of the leprosy and they remained healed, but in the end it was the one man’s faith that made him well with his Lord Jesus. Think again on Pastor Rinckart in Eilenburg, it was his faith that made him well, it was his faith that made him well with his Lord Jesus even when everything around him was falling apart (the war, the sickness, the famine, the death, the death of his wife). In all of this it was his faith that carried him through and through his faith he gave thanks.

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard someone sick, someone going through trouble say something like, “I don’t know how people without faith get through this ... my faith makes all the difference,” they’ll say, and it does. The faith you have is a gift, given by God the Holy Spirit. We were just talking about this at our Adult Class last Wednesday. In the explanation of the Third Article of the Apostles Creed in the Small Catechism we learn these words, which by now I’m sure you now have memorized,

“I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Ghost has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith;”[10]

Now this gift of faith that comes through hearing God’s Word, that comes through Baptism — like the one we have in our 11am Divine Service for Mica — yes this same gift of faith that we cling to in the Lord’s Supper and in our darkest hours and in our best of days is a gift that we can share with others when we speak the Word of God to them in comfort and even in times of admonition and rebuke. God uses you to raise your children in the faith and to share it with the rest of your neighbours in your daily life. Any list of thanks would be too short and a poor in deed list if it didn’t include thanks to God for His gift of faith to us and for the many other gifts He so lavishly bestows upon us each and every day.  

All praise and thanks to God the Father now be given;
The Son and Him Who reigns with Them in highest Heaven;
The one eternal God, whom earth and Heaven adore;
For thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore.[11]

Our Old Testament Reading today ends with a promise from God to bring His Children out of the wilderness where He is caring for them into a future land where they will lack for nothing: Moses tells them that, “the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, ... a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper.” Notice that the promise is an active one, “the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land,” This is what He promises them: We hear the same sort of thing in the New Testament when we hear Saint Paul write in 1st Corinthians, “the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”[12]

Dear ones, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit — One God now and forever — is at work in your life each and every day; The Good Lord is with you in joy and in adversity, at the height of war and in the day of peace. Jesus is with you as He dies upon the cross of His crucifixion and He is with you in your own death however that may find you, Jesus is with you in the waters of Baptism which you this day share with your newest little sister Mica Westphal and He is with you when you bring your grumbling and thankless heart to Him asking for forgiveness; He is with you when you don’t feel like raising that same heart up to Him, when the thought of raising your voice or your hands in praise bugs you and cheeses you off – even then Jesus is with you. He’s with you in the moments you’ve felt like a failure in passing the faith on to the next generation and He’s with you in those moments when you’ve feel like you’ve succeeded in that task. Turn to Him in all circumstances for strength and for forgiveness remembering that His faithfulness to you is perfect, His lack of complaint in the face of trouble and death is resolute, and He accepted the will of the Father in all things so that you will have forgiveness for the times when you like the Children of Israel complain about everything, about the trivial and about the truly bad troubles of the world and about the truly good gifts of God.      

As for Pastor Rinckart, He was blessed to see the end of that 30 years war; He was even given opportunity to negotiate a peace for the city of Eilenburg. For all of this he was truly thankful. His general attitude could be found on a signet ring that he’s worn through those days with an acronym for a German phrase, which in English stands for “My Trust is in Christ Alone,”[13]  

As a baptised Christians living in a World of light and shadow, of good and evil, of trouble and blessing, to you I say: Give Thanks with a grateful heart to your heavenly Father the Maker of heaven and earth, and when your heart is not grateful ask for, and receive, the forgiveness of Jesus your Saviour, remembering that He trusted His heavenly Father and that this same heavenly Father provides for our needs of body and soul out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in us. For all this dear ones it is our duty to thank and praise, serve and obey Him. This is most certainly true.[14]

Let us pray: Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen.

[1] “Now Thank We All Our God,” Lutheran Service Book, Concordia Publishing House 2006, #895.
[2] A manuscript of this table grace from Pastor Rinckart dated 1630 was handed down within the family even until the 19th century.
[3] Lutheran Service Book: Companion to the Hymns, Concordia Publishing House 2019, page 1418-1419.
[4] 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
[5] “Now Thank We All Our God,” stanza 1.
[6] Deuteronomy 8:1-10
[7] Numbers 21:4-5
[8] “Now Thank We All Our God,” stanza 2.
[9] Luke 17:11-19
[10] Explanation of the Third Article of the Apostles’ Creed, Luther’s Small Catechism, Concordia Publishing House 2017, Page 17.
[11] “Now Thank We All Our God,” stanza 3.
[12] 1 Corinthians 1:18
[13] MVSICA “Mein Vertrauen Stehnt In Christo Allein” this holds a kind of double meaning MVISCA = MUSICA.
[14] Explanation of the First Article of the Apostles’ Creed, Luther’s Small Catechism, Concordia Publishing House 2017, Page 16.

Photo Credit: Composit with text by Pr. Ted Giese of Thankgiving Leaves Background from negativespace.co with painting of mother and child praying by Karl Gebhardt "Saying Grace" from picryl.com.