Thanksgiving: Law and Gospel

0:02 Looking at our world from a theological perspective. This is the Theology Central podcast, making Theology Central, Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas. Now, when you hear those terms, right, whether they're spoken to you or maybe you feel you have to say. Them, how do they truly make you feel? Merry Christmas, Happy Thanksgiving, happy holidays? It's the most wonderful time in the. World, right, okay, the most wonderful time of the year. Like, how does those how does that host sentiment? How do those sayings, those expressions, those greetings, Do they make you feel warm inside happy, bring back wonderful.

0:56 Memories or do you kind of wish you can? I don't know. Escape And nobody was saying Happy Thanksgiving, nobody was saying happy Holidays. Nobody was saying Merry Christmas. Nobody's saying it's the most wonderful time of the year, most wonderful time ever, most wonderful time in the world, whatever expression they want to use. I know the phrase is most wonderful time of the year. I know the phrase, Okay, I know the song or the point is, no matter how they may express it, no matter what they may say, does it make you feel great? Do you like that feeling? Maybe the entire holiday season is one that you really really enjoy and you look forward to and it brings you such happiness and joy, or maybe it makes you feel discouraged and depressed and maybe a sense of melancholy or loneliness, or.

1:54 Resentment or bitterness. Maybe if you are a Christian when it comes to happy Holidays, Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, the most wonderful time of the year, maybe all of that kind of shows up in Bible teaching and preaching in such a way that maybe make you feel makes you feel guilty, maybe make you feel some shame. How does it? What does it do for you? Look the people who listen to this episode, there's going to be lots of different reactions. Some of you are like, Oh, I love this time of year. It's great, it's wonderful. Others of you like, I I loathe it, I hate it. I wish I could escape from it. I think there's going to be radically different feelings when it comes to this and what we're going to talk about that we're going to talk about it maybe in some ways that maybe no one else is going to talk about it, and we will do that right after I say good afternoon everyone. It is Thursday, November the twenty eighth, twenty twenty four. You know what that means, right, It's Thursday, November the twenty eighth, twenty twenty four. Well, it means it's Thanksgiving here in the United States of America, which is well prompting me to have this discussion. So good afternoon everyone. It is Thursday, November the twenty eighth, twenty twenty four. It is currently two two pm Central Time, and I'm coming to you live from the Theology Central Studio located right here in Abilene, Texas.

3:30 Now, I know right. Now, if you go to the sermon Audio dot Com website right there at the top, I think you'll see something that says collections, and it says I think it shows a picture of a girl holding like a basket and it says Thanksgiving. And then you can view the collection and their sermon after sermon after sermon about Thanksgiving, because today is Thanksgiving here in the United States of America. So they've collecting all the sermons about it. And if you look at it, well, this is what I found. As soon as I opened up the collection. The very first sermon are we truly thankful? Are we truly thankful?

4:14 Now? I think you can just by the title, I think you know the way that's going to go right. It's a thanksgiving sermon that's going to challenge you. Are you really thankful? Are you thankful enough? Do you have the right attitude of gratitude? Are you truly being thankful? And by the time the sermon is over, you may feel convicted, which I guess could be a positive thing, or you could be well, you could really feel even worse than when you started listening because of this. Now I just listen to me carefully. Well, many people love the holidays. Well, while many people have great memories about them, there are a lot of people in the world who the holidays brings back horrible memories. For many people, the holidays is a time of horrible memories, bad emotions. They feel lonely, they feel depressed, they feel a sense of melancholy, They may feel a sense of regret, and it's.

5:24 Not a good time. They already come into the holidays already having a bad time. And much of the preaching. Is hey, hey, hey, you need to be thankful. Hey you should have joy, Hey you should have gratitude. Hey, you should have this, and you need to do this, and you should do this, and you need to do this. And it's a very there's no other way to say it. It's very law based approach. Law law, and you know, wherever the law is, all it's going to do is condemn. All it's going to do is show you, well how messed up you really are. And sometimes we do need to hear the law. Let me make it very clear. There are times, there are many of us during the holidays, we may need to hear a very law based message to show us our ingratitude, to show us our wrong attitudes.

6:11 Sometimes we need to hear that I am by no means dismissing that I don't want anyone emailing me. Going, well, how dare you downplay the law? No, the law is needed sometimes, But there are times, and this is just very important to our discussion about law and gospel. When is the law needed and when is the gospel needed? There are sometimes people are already so beaten down, so discouraged, so despondent, so much in despair because of the holidays, they need to hear something other than hey, you need to be doing this and you need to be doing this and stop doing this, and don't do this, and don't do this, and stop doing this and don't do this and don't. Do this and don't do this. And you're like, Okay, I've got. Not only do I have the million things I need to do in the holiday, I now have a to do list spiritually that's seventeen miles long. And I've got to try to do all of this on top of doing all of this, and then I've also got to be happy, and I got to be cheerful, and I got to be telling everyone Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, It's the most wonderful time of the year. When I feel like this is the worst time to ever exist in my life, sometimes it can drive people almost further into the pit of despair.

7:19 And I know people are well. Meaning, you know people who come up and go happy Holiday, Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas. Hey, isn't it the most wonderful time of the year. People who say those things, they typically mean well, they're excited, they just sometimes forget and maybe other people had a different experience. Right, So I felt like, well, if the messages in the collection, I'm not saying all of them are like this, but the spotlight sermon is are we truly thankful? I know which direction that's going to go. It's going to challenge level of thankfulness. And I'm not saying that that's not needed, but I think there's gotta be another approach. So we're gonna have a discussion. I don't know for how long we're gonna have this discussion, but we're gonna have a discussion because I put together some things.

8:16 Right, So, so at first I was gonna. I was gonna. I had like a certain way of approaching this, and then I kind of changed. Right before we went live on the air, I started thinking Thanksgiving, law and gospel, Thanksgiving, loneliness and depression, right, almost like two concepts all put together. Like at first I wasn't even thinking about law and gospel. I was thinking about loneliness and depression. But then right when I got ready to go live, I was looking at the collections there on sermon audio, and I saw the Spotlight sermon and I was like, well. That's a law approach. So if people are already experiencing loneliness and depression, do they need to hear a law message for the holidays?

9:03 I'm not saying those law messages aren't needed, but there's got to be someone who speaks to the people who maybe have a different approach. So let's just consider this. I think when we consider we'll call them holiday sermons, the sermons leading up to Thanksgiving, the sermons leading into Christmas, and the sermons that will lead into New Year's. Right. I think all of those holiday. Sermons Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's they tend to focus on certain themes. I think that that's true. Joy, peace, hope, gratitude, and those feelings are and those things are kind of central to the season. Right. Let's talk about joy, let's talk about peace, let's talk about hope, let's talk about gratitude. I think you could say those themes are central to the season. However, these messages can unintentionally I'm not saying pastors are intentionally doing this, but they can unintentionally lean heavily into a law.

10:11 Based teaching. Because they prescribe how people should feel or what they are to think. They almost tell you this is how you should be feeling today, this is how you should be thinking about the season. And then again, for some people, they. Need to hear hey, you really should be feeling this way, you should be thinking this way. But there are some people who are already. Kind of in a pit of despair or they're not in a good place, and so now they're like, Okay, so now not only do I have all of these negative feelings, now I'm basically being condemned for having these negative feelings. And sometimes I think people want to say, hey, you don't know me, you don't know anything about me, you don't know where, back off and stop getting in my face telling me I need to be happy, happy, happy, happy, this is the most wonderful time in the world. Because it's not, I think it can sometimes make people feel like, well, maybe the church isn't the place for me during this time of year.

11:11 See, if you're. An individual and you're already struggling with loneliness, depression, or melancholy, these sermons may only increase your feeling of guilt, increase your feeling of shame, or increase your feeling of feeling isolated, in no place to go and misunderstood and that you don't really fit in. Instead of offering the comfort of the gospel, these messages become burdensome by imposing emotional expectations that seem unattainable. They're like, hey, this is how you should feel. Look at everyone be happy. Look, look, look look at the family. They're all dressed nice.

11:54 Look. Oh it's wonderful. Yes, it's Oh. Look there's the little Nativity and there's this. All the families are together for Thanksgiving and they're doing this, and they're doing all those people. Look at how wonderful everyone should be. You should be filled with gratitude, you should be happy, you should have joy, you should have peace. I mean, come on, you're a Christian, are you. Well? Then guess what you end up feeling? You feel like, well, man. I gotta do better. I gotta do better. I gotta do better. I need to act differently, I need to think differently. And at some point you may just realize but wait a minute, these feelings are inside of me, and you become conflicted and you may finally think this is unattainable.

12:39 I guess I don't fit in now. Not all of you are going to relate to this. Some of you men, you're like having the time of your life today. You got family, you're playing games, you got three plates of food, and you're going back for dessert and there's music in the house and laughter and joy, and it's family and it's close, and you're like, man, this is the best. What is he talking about? Just remember. Your experience may not be the experience of others. If you would have got in your car this morning, you could have drove to different restaurants that were open for Thanksgiving.

13:21 You could have walked in and if you looked around, you know what you would have seen. You would have seen some people sitting by a table, sitting on or at a table by themselves, having a Thanksgiving dinner and a restaurant. Now you'll see some people there together as a family. They're just doing it because it's convenient. But you'll look around, you'll be like, man, it seems odd and out of place, right, I mean typically, I don't think it's odd or out of place to go anywhere by yourself, a movie, any going by yourself. I mean that I have no problem with that. But it stands out.

14:02 It will stand out on a holiday, right, it will stand out. Now, how what is that person feeling at that particular moment. They may not be feeling anything, or they may be sitting there just trying to because the holidays make you You're told you almost have to feel a certain way. See, many of these holiday sermons can lean towards law. Let's consider some of the ways some of the holiday sermons can be very law based. Many of them focus on emotional states. You see, these sermons will stress that Christians shouldeel joy, gratitude, or peace during the holidays. While these emotions are certainly desirable, they can come across as commands rather than maybe you could call them maybe the fruit of the spirit, or maybe sometimes it's not even a fruit of the spirit. Sometimes these just the result of people in good situations. Have you ever noticed how people can have joy and gratitude and peace when circumstances are great.

15:10 They might say, Oh, I'm. Experiencing the fruit of the spirit, or you're experiencing the fruit of a good situation. Take away your situation and let's see how much joy, peace, and gratitude you have. Sometimes you'll hear something like this, as Christians, we should be the most joyful people during Christmas because we know the reason for the season. And everybody'll be like amen. But if you're someone struggling with depression or grief, this statement probably will create guilt for not feeling joyful. Rather than pointing people to comfort and Christ, you get points to an obligation. You get pointed to what you're to.

16:04 You don't find comfort in Christ, you find well mate. So all that I need to know is that, well, Christmas is about Christ. But what it tells me is I'm supposed to have this emotional state. You don't have that emotional state. It can lead to some well, negative feelings. So number one, these holiday sermons tend to focus on emotional state. They really emphasize gratitude. Messages about being thankful can become prescriptive, especially when framed as God has done so much for you, how can you not be grateful? So this approach again maybe not the intended purpose. It brings shame to those who are struggling to have any gratitude, maybe due to their circumstances. See, it's easy to look at everywhere like, hey, God done so much for you.

17:02 You should be grateful, look at all that you have, but you don't know who. You don't know. Everyone who's hearing that message because other people go, yeah, things are going great for you, let's talk about me. You don't know what you're talking about, and the same God that gave these people so much didn't bother to show up to give these people anything close to what these people have. I mean, that's a reality. I know nobody wants to admit that. Like everything may be going great for you right now, right maybe get in your car and go drive to a hospital. There's people laying in there's children right now in the children's hospital dying of some terminal disease, and they're having Thanksgiving an hospital maybe the last one they ever see.

17:53 So, I mean, that's the thing. It's easy to talk sometimes sitting in the comfort of church, which it sounds so good. So I'm not saying we don't say we shouldn't be grateful. I'm just saying that we have to understand things are complicated. So I think number one, we have a focus on emotional states. Number Two, sermons tend to emphasize gratitude. Number Three, there's kind of a cultural pressure reinforced by the church. Within the church. There's like a cultural pressure to think a certain way, act a certain way. Put on the smile, be happy. The cultural narrative of the holidays is a time of family togetherness and celebration, and this is echoed in the sermons.

18:45 The sermons reinforce the ideals without acknowledging those who may feel disconnected or feel grief during the season, the message becomes exclusionary. It excludes these people. Hey, the church is only for all the happy everyone's got, everything's going wonderful. Where we don't really have anything to say for you people were life stinks. We don't really, I mean, most likely it stinks because you're sinners and you deserve it. Now, I'm not saying that that's the intended message. Or the message is. I don't care what you're going through. You should be happy. You should be. Joyful, your lips should be filled with praise. You should be doing this. You should be doing this. And it's law, la la la la law. So holiday sermons can lean towards law by focusing on emotional state, by emphasizing gratitude, and by being preached within a culture that's already going to put that pressure on people to kind of.

19:45 Act a certain way and be a certain way. So is there a response to this? Is there a gospel response to this? Well, I think the the gospel does not demand. The gospel does not demand that we manufacture specific feelings. That's the great thing about the gospel doesn't demand that you manufacture a feeling. As said, it offers comfort and assurance regardless of your emotional state. The gospel is, here is comfort, here is peace, and it doesn't matter how you feel. You don't have to manufacture it. You don't have to pretend. You don't have to do anything, because the Gospel is what God has done for you.

20:34 Consider some gospel truths. Here God meets us and our weakness. God meets us in our weakness. That's the gospel message. God does not require us to feel a certain way to receive his love. Christ came for the broken, weary, and downtrodden. God meets us in our weakness. He doesn't say, pretend that you're not we pretend that everything is great. God, God comes to us and our brokenness. I think that's an important gospel truth. God meets us in our weakness. Second, the incarnation is God's solidarity. Jesus entered a broken and painful world. His coming was not for the joyful and strong, but for the weak and weary. So God meets us in our weakness, and He met us in our weakness by sending his son, who was born in a manger, born in Bethlehem. He entered into the broken world not so that we could pretend that everything was wonderful.

21:38 He came because things. Were not wonderful so we could The gospel approach is to remind us that God meets us in our brokenness, in our weakness, and that the incarnation is well, he's kind of there's solidarity with us, there's some kind of connection with us because He entered into it in the flesh. I think a gospel approach is also it's grace over law. The message of Christmas is not about what we should do, think or feel, but. What Christ has done. I think thanksgiving is not about you being thankful so much is about just being about being understanding what God has done for us. I know we have said, well you have to be this level of thankful. It's just being thankful of what. It's focusing on what God has done for me, not on how all the different ways I should show thankfulness. I should focus first on just what God has done for me. Christmas is not about what I should do, think or feel, but what about God has done. We emphasize Christ's work over emotions. Right, we don't emphasize our emotions. We emphasize what Christ has done.

22:50 The focus should not be on obligation. The focus should be on grace. So I think a gospel based message is God meets us in our weakness, the incarnation as Christ entering in with us. There's solidarity, there's some kind of connection with us that we emphasize grace over law. And I think another a gospel approach is the reality. We speak of. Reality see acknowledging that the holidays can be hard, create space for those who are struggling. The Gospel reassures that sorrow is not a sign of weak faith, but as a.

23:33 Part of life in a fallen world. It does not mean you have weak faith. If and there's something necessarily wrong with you, if you're struggling with bitterness or frustration or loneliness or depression or discouragement. It's okay because we live in a fallen world. And I think a true faith, a strong faith, is the one that can acknowledge that, not the one that tries to say all the right words, because that's the cultural the cultural expectation put onto you by the church. The psalms are filled with laments, and those are spiritual cries. Those are spiritual screams of pain and despair.

24:14 And it's okay. A strong faith can say. Hey, this day is trash, this day is garbage, this day is depressing. I hate this. It's okay to say that. So when you have law based sermons that say do this, do this, do that, well, how do they affect people? Well? Number one, it increases guilt. If you're battling depression or loneliness, well, now you feel like you're felling God on top of everything else because you're not living up to the emotional standards presented into the sermons. What you'll think something like, why can't I feel joy?

24:56 Is my faith week? So you just increase the guilt to people, they are like, okay, so not only do I feel bad because I already feel bad, Well, now I'm disappointing God. So I even feel bad upon already feeling bad. At that point, it's just like forget, I'm just going to the liquor store. You don't know what else to do. It can lead to shame and isolation. A sermon that emphasizes how believers should feel might lead someone to withdraw believing they're out of place in the church. And you may feel really out of place in the church because the church is. Going to be happy, happy, joy, wonderful. Isn't it the most wonderful time of the year. Oh, isn't it great? Isn't it wonderful? Hey? Hey, hey, hey, great, great, great, great, great great great.

25:39 And when faith a third thing that can do, it can lead to a misunderstanding of faith. See, when faith is tied to an emotional performance, it distorts the Gospel. It makes Christianity feel like an impossible standard rather than a message of grace. Hey, if you truly have faith. You'll feel this way, and you'll have this emotion and you'll well now, no, no, that's the Psalmist many times would demonstrate their faith by expressing emotions that would not be allowed in many churches because they would feel uncomfortable hearing people express such strong, negative emotions. You don't tie faith to emotional performance. You don't do that. So how should we approach the holiday, especially in Bible teaching and Christian podcasts.

26:33 I think we emphasize the gospel. We focus on what Christ has done, not on what we must do or feel the message of Christmas is about God's action in Christ, not on human achievement. Thanksgiving. We should be thankful for what God has done. It shouldn't be well, we should do this, and we have to do this and do this. He said, well, maybe I don't feel thankful enough. It's okay, because whether you are thankful or not thankful, whether you have gratitude or don't have gratitude, the truth is Christ still came and died for you, a sinner, and your sins are still removed as far as the east is from the west. Your sins are covered in the blood of Jesus Christ.

27:14 Your name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life. You are eternally saved, no matter if you feel it. Don't feel it, because it's not about your emotional performance. I think in our preaching and teaching we have to acknowledge the reality of struggle and pain. I think in our preaching and teaching we have to incorporate the reality of loneliness, grief, and depression. I think we can maybe use passages. Let me look at this. I think this one will work. We could use things like the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous now, it says, but the Lord delivereth them.

28:09 Out of them. All. Of course, we could try to figure out exactly what that means. But it talks about the broken and the contride and affliction being a reality. John sixteen weave it's John sixteen. I think you know what this one says, John sixteen thirty three. These things I've spoken unto you, that you might have peace in the world. In the world you shall have tribulation. The Bible does not deny that there's gonna be affliction. There's gonna be pain, there's gonna be tribulation, there's gonna be suffering in this life. The hope is that there is ultimate deliverance.

28:54 Now. That deliverance is not now. It's coming, right, it's not now. I think we have to acknowledge this. The holidays can be a reminder of pain or loss, and that's okay. God. God's love isn't dependent on your emotional state. We can acknowledge that. That the holidays can be a rough time. It's okay to acknowledge that. So Number one, I think in our teaching we have to emphasize the Gospel number two. I think we have to acknowledge the struggle. Acknowledge even that the Bible acknowledges the struggle, the pain, the suffering, the brokenness in the world. We could point to God's presence to some level, right, We could focus on the incarnation as evidence of God's presence and all circumstances. Jesus came to dwell among us not to demand emotional perfection, but.

29:57 To bring peace. God entered. God entered this broken world not to condemn us for our sadness, but to walk with us through it. He didn't come to say, hey, turn that round upside down. You better do this, you better know he I don't think that's the right way to do that. And I think another thing we can do in our preaching is I think we can encourage other Christians to be a source of support and to avoid guilting other people that they have to participate in all of the reindeer games, do all of the thing. Stop doing that, Stop guilting people that, hey you should do this, and you should stop guilting people. Let people be who they are and process it however they need to process it, and maybe it doesn't conform to your nice little Christian idea.

30:53 Walk with people through sorrow. Don't sit there and give them other little stinking cliches that mean nothing. You're a little bumpers stick or answer. Don't get so defensive sometimes. I think when other people suffer, it makes some people feel uncomfortable and they don't like it, so then they feel like they have to say that you don't. Sometimes you don't need to say or do anything. I think the message of the holidays is that Christ came into the world and he came into a world of darkness. He came into a world that was broken, and he came to bring light. And this light that Christ came into the world to bring does not depend on your ability to feel joyful, hopeful, but it shines, shines regardless of your circumstance or mind.

31:40 We shift the focus from. What we must do to what God has done, then holiday messages could maybe be an offering a lifeline of grace, especially to those who feel burdened during this season. I think we need a gospel approach, not a law approach. Now, I was gonna do all my entire My original idea for this was to really kind of focus on the idea of loneliness, depression, melancholy, and a realistic faith. That's really the direction I was going to go. But I think I'm just gonna.

32:24 Leave it right here. My all of my notes actually. We're we're dealing with things like loneliness, depression. That's what I was going to go with, right. I have something here about loneliness here, I have something here about melancholy. I have something here about a realistic faith. I have practical steps. For the season, I have, I have I have, I have scriptures here about it all like I had. I had an entire different idea. But just when we got ready to get started, I'm like, oh, yeah, Cermonadio has the Thanksgiving collection. Let me look, Oh look at that. Are we truly think? And I'm like, oh boy, you can already hear. The answer is going to be, well, we're probably not truly thankful, so I need to feel bad for not being thankful.

33:08 And I'm like, that's very law based. Now, I'm not saying the sermon may turn out to be very gospel based, but I'm saying the title makes me immediately feel like which directions go. I'm not saying that's the direction the sermon goes. No, when I accuse me of that, I'm saying that. When I saw that title, I was like, oh boy, I'll bet you that's the way it's going to go. It may turn out to be the most gospel driven message in history. But when I saw that, it made me start thinking of how many times the church makes you feel like, oh, you got to do this, you got to feel this, you got to think this, you got to act this way, you got to put a smile, you got to do this, and you almost at some point you may feel like I don't belong with any of these people, or you start thinking all. These people are just fake. They're all faking this.

33:48 No, no, come on, I know their lives, or maybe the people are genuine, and then that makes you feel even more messed up. So I just I just want you this this. I mean, it's Thanksgiving now. We got from Thanksgiving now, we got we gotta make it all the way through New Year's. We got to get all the way. Through it, right, and some of you, you're just gonna have the most wonderful time. I know, I don't know why I said the most wonderful time in the world at the beginning of this But the most wonderful time of the year, maybe the most wonderful time, it's the most wonderful place anywhere in the world is to be wherever you are during the holidays. It may be filled with just lots of presence and family and fun and food and activities and you're just gonna you're gonna.

34:34 Live it up. And now you know what, that's great, that's make the most be grateful for what you have. Be grateful. Just remember that maybe you have all of those feelings of peace. And joy and gratitude and it has nothing to do because of how spiritual you are. And maybe you just have a lot of good things to be grateful for. And that's okay. Just never forget not everyone else is in your position, so don't forget others. And when you hear sermons about all of this, and I would challenge you to listen to a lot of the holiday sermons, you're gonna hear it advents beginning. I think Advent begins Sunday.

35:20 I think it's Sunday. You gotta season an advent, Christmas Thanksgiving. When you listen to sermons that are about Thanksgiving, Advent or Christmas. Just listen. Are they law or are they gospel? There's always a need for law. Sometimes there's a need for gospel. People are already broken, shattered, traumatize, destroyed. They need the message of the Gospel. This this one completely a different direction than I wanted it to go. But that's okay. I think I think this is good. I think this is a good a good thing to consider.

36:02 I think it's a good thing to consider because I think many of the sermons that start off at very gospel minded, they tend to devolve. They kind of just fall apart and the next thing, you know, are you doing this? Are you doing this? You should be doing this? You should be doing this. And I think many of the sermons I've ever preached about Thanksgiving or even Christmas, many of them are very. Law law law law, law, law, law, law law. Because in many cases I felt like the way to deal with some of my issues is performance. Well, if I do this and do this, and do this and do this, then Christmas in. The Holidays will feel better because look at all the spiritual things that I'm doing. Well, am I just trying to overcome maybe certain feelings because by religious performance, and then it usually all ends very not good. Anyway, I don't know that. The thing is, we start the conversation.

36:50 We start the conversation on Thanksgiving Day. Now, the people who will be able to know most are people who can say, man, I can relate to you because the holidays are not good for me, And I'll be like, man, I can understand. I can understand that. I can understand that I am sitting in the room that I'm sitting in. I am just a little over ten minutes away, maybe not even ten minutes, maybe less than ten minutes away from the psychiatric hospital where I spent a Thanksgiving when I was a teenager after trying to kill myself after my mother died. My mother died in October, tried to kill myself in November, and I was in the psychiatric hospital on Thanksgiving Day. So I will always remember Thanksgiving Day being inside that hospital.

37:46 So yeah, I have clear memories. And yeah, and just the holidays for them just naturally create a sense of melancholy. And there's just a lot of feelings and this and that understand it by and my situations and then I've got lots of bad memories from things happening on holidays. Growing up, I could go into all the horror stories there. The point is I've got enough to go. I can relate to some I can't really, And so I've always been and you'll notice anytime I do holiday messages, they tend to be much more somber, much more depressing, much more discouraging, because. It's almost like, this is the way I feel. Let all those other pastors speak to all the normal people, and those normal people can go listen to those messages and they can all say we need to do this, and they can, but there's there's gotta be a voice out there for the people who are like, man, yeah, this is not a good day for me, this is not a good week. It's not gonna be a good month.

38:45 From now till New Year's it's gonna be down. And and you know what, look at how many suicide attempts happen during this time of year. So there are people out there who maybe need to hear more than just say. You should do this, and you should do this, and you should do this, and you should do this. Maybe there's some people who need to hear what God has done for us, and that stays true no matter how we feel. And He did it for us, not so that we can be guilted into feeling better. He did it for us because God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believed in him should not perish but have everlasting life. How can we make it more gospel based and not law based.

39:32 Maybe you disagree, maybe you feel most Christmas and holiday sermons are gospel based. I mean, that's a whole conversation we could have, but I'll let. You have that. You can get back to your activities, fun, food, family, Please have a great time, Please enjoy, make the most out of it. Make the most out of it. Don't if you have a good situation, don't waste it. All right, that's what you should do. But I think it's a good conversation to have about how law and gospel can even show up as a meaningful philological discussion when it comes to even holiday sermons.

40:18 Thanks for listening, everyone, Have a great rest of your Thanksgiving. God bless