17th Sunday after Pentecost 2 Timothy 1:1-14

Preaching Commentary

God as the Thanksgiving Hub

Given how pervasive the theme of gratitude is in Scripture—and how my wife and I try to condition our children always to say “thank you” to anyone who shows them even the slightest kindness—it often strikes me how rarely in the Bible you find one person thanking another person. Perhaps the closest you get is Jesus asking rhetorically, “Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded?” (Luke 17:9), which could be taken to imply that you would thank the slave for doing something above and beyond. But the consistent pattern is giving thanks only to God. So where we might thank another directly, in Scripture gratitude is directed to God for that…