The Bible Study Podcast, episode 43.

This was the second episode in a series on The Church, what it is and what it's called to be,

and this episode will focus on The Church is called to be thankful.

Welcome to the Bible Study podcast. I'm your host, Chris Christensen.

Thankfulness seemed like the most appropriate thing to do for an episode that will come out on Thanksgiving.

So let's look at what the Bible has to say about the church and the topic of thankfulness.

First, we ought to say that if you look up thankfulness or Thanksgiving or thanks in your Bible dictionary, or if you look it up at

Biblegateway.org, which is what I did, I found 144 different listings that had to do with being

thankful, whether it be Jesus giving thanks before he broke the bread at the last supper or some call to giving thanksgiving or the thank offering, which is laid out as one of the offerings in the Old Testament in the Levitical Law in the seventh chapter.

Thankfulness is a theme that runs throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament as well.

And it's quite clear that God's people are called to be thankful. runs throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament as well.

And it's quite clear that God's people are called to be thankful.

It comes up in the Psalms, in Psalm 100, for instance, enter his gates with Thanksgiving and his courts with praise, give thanks to him and praise his name.

That our very entrance into God's presence should be done with thankfulness.

Thankfulness and praise go together in a lot of the different Psalms

and a lot of the different verses I found about thankfulness.

And then again from Psalm 106,

Praise the Lord, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,

his love endures forever.

So there is this theme of thankfulness

that God's people should be thankful.

But the question we get to at that point is,

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