A Sacrifice Of Thanksgiving

“The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me.” – Psalm 50:23

We read about sacrifices of thanksgiving back in Leviticus 7:11-15. These were voluntary, freewill offerings of animal and grain, offered as a gift to the Lord. The meat was shared among God, the priests, and the worshipper, to be consumed fresh; leftovers were burned.

The Psalms often speak of thanksgiving as a sacrifice we offer to God. We aren’t bound by Levitical law anymore, but they offer a helpful template. Giving thanks isn’t compulsory the way other offerings are—as God says earlier in this Psalm, he doesn’t need our bulls or goats, “for every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills” (verse 10). But it is something we do of our freewill, precisely because we realize that everything is God’s, all that we have comes from him and is meant for show his character in some way. 

Giving thanks requires intentionality and work. Bringing the materials for the offering would have required advance planning and preparation. I imagine shaping the loaves, rolling out the wafers, measuring the oil, feeding and grooming the animal all those years. This was not merely the work of a moment. And it cost them something: time, labor, the value of the offering itself. What does our thanksgiving cost us? It may cost me my time and mental energy. It may cost me my complaints. My fears. My wants. Thanking God is not something I simply tack onto the rest of my day as an afterthought: it involves an entire change in posture, a turning away from grumbling, and worrying, and coveting, and that costs me something.

Giving thanks spills over to others. That very day, it is shared with, consumed by, the priest. Our thanks feeds others: it gives them strength and nourishment, it is a natural invitation to join along. It changes the tenor and atmosphere of our homes and workplaces. And it is meant to be shared afresh, not eaten as leftovers. Giving thanks is itself an act of faith, trust that God will provide anew each day; an act of daily discipline, a process of growth rather than a one-time event.

The purpose of giving thanks is to glorify God. When you do this, God says in this verse, you glorify me. The benefits of gratitude are widely acknowledged—thus the proliferation of gratitude logs in bullet journals and thankfulness exercises in classrooms—all of those are good, but in and of themselves, they fall short of the point. I don’t give thanks to make myself feel better about my life. I give thanks to glorify God: Hebrew kabad, literally “to be heavy.” I think of God’s glory as his very character and being, breaking out like light into my life, and giving thanks is to see that light, to feel the heaviness, the weightiness of his holiness and goodness upon every moment of my day. It is to say, God, what I see, what I hold, what I taste and smell and have: this is your glory. It draws me to your altar. It fills me with thanks.