Thanksgiving Songs We Should Sing Frequently

I love the traditional Thanksgiving song, Come Ye Thankful People Come, #729 in our songbook. I hope that we sing it Sunday and often during the year to come. Not only does it echo Ps. 100, it celebrates the work of our Creator on the Day 6 as He fashioned the earth (Gen. 1:29-30). Also, there are three unnoticed Thanksgiving Songs in Scripture that we need to sing – Rev. 11:15-19; Deut. 26:5-10, & Eph. 5:3-4.

In the Revelation, a Thanksgiving Song is sung just before a Mother’s Day song in Rev. 12:1-6. A child is birthed who is to rule the nations, looking back to the enthronement of the crucified Lamb (Rev. 5:9-10). Loud voices proclaim, The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ and he shall reign forever (Rev. 11:15). A Thanksgiving Song follows: We give thanks to you Lord God Almighty, who is and who was for you have taken your great power and begun to reign. There is thanksgiving that the time has come for God to act against the raging nations, to reward his servants and destroy the destroyers of the earth (11:17-18). We must sing that song today.

In Deut. 26 Moses instructs Israel to sing a Thanksgiving Song at a harvest festival, a setting that corresponds to our Thanksgiving. The ancestry song is a confession of God’s saving deeds that created Israel (Dt. 26:5-10). Singing that song is also a pledge to use the produce which God has given them to give to other sojourners, widows and orphans and to obey the commands of the Lord. As a new creation, the Israel of God, the church, makes a similar pledge (Gal. 6:1-10, 16).

God’s plan is to unite all things in heaven and earth in Christ (Eph. 1:9-10). Those near and far are created in Christ Jesus to be one (Eph 2:10, 15). They sing at baptism (5:14) and walk as wise singing and making melody to the Lord. They respond to the sexual immorality, impurity, and covetousness of their age with a song of thanksgiving (5:3-4). May we learn to give thanks that God created man, male and female he created them.

—Tom Yoakum