Now listen, I don't know about you,
but as the years have gone by, have you noticed this,
that Thanksgiving is somewhat fading into the background
as a unique day in our culture?
It feels like, and maybe I'm just crazy,
we get past Halloween, right?
And then everybody immediately starts talking about Christmas.
We're like leapfrogging right over Thanksgiving.
I hear and see people that are already
talking about putting up Christmas decorations.
I hear about Christmas shopping.
I know that not only has Hobby Lobby put their Christmas
stuff out, it's picked over, which tells you everything
about the Christian community.
That was for my wife, by the way.
But in doing this and leapfrogging
over this important holiday, I think
we are missing out on a grace from the Lord,
just a small injection of His grace into our calendar.
I know it's only one day, but at least it's
one day that sort of forces us to slow down
and to consider the goodness of God
and to consider the importance of thanking Him,
the importance of giving thanks in our lives.
As many of you know, Thanksgiving
is a holiday that was born out of all kinds of adversity
and struggle and loss.
It dates all the way back to the year 1621.
Long before America was even an independent nation.
And we know a little bit about the history
of these English separatists, Calvinists,
who got on a ship, we call them pilgrims,
and they landed in the new year, in the year 1620,
about 100 people fleeing from religious persecution
in England, but completely unprepared for what they
were about to face, woefully unprepared
for the brutal conditions they would
face when they landed at this place we know
as Plymouth, Massachusetts.
In fact, get this now, roughly half of the pilgrims
died in that first year.
Now, try to imagine what that level of suffering and despair
must have been like.
Imagine having to bury half of your friends and compatriots
who took this journey with you, watching them suffer,
watching them die, and burying them in the cold soil.
Imagine.
Were it not for the help of the native Wampanoag tribe, who
taught the pilgrims how to farm, can you
imagine how unprepared they were?
If the native tribes had not helped them to learn that,
none of them would have made it.
But among those who survived, there
was a man named Edward Winslow, and he left a testimony
to that first Thanksgiving meal in 1621.
Here's what he said.
He said, our harvest being gotten in,
so they had a first successful harvest,
our governor sent four men fouling.
Anybody know what that is?
Hunting for birds.
OK, turkeys, sure.
Turkey's the worst kind of meat there is.
I just decided to inject my personal opinion.
It's the worst.
But anyway, I understand they needed to go fouling.
I get that, right?
Our governor sent four men fouling
that we might, in special manner, rejoice together
after we gathered the fruit of our labors.
And although it be not always so plentiful as it
was at this time, here's the key phrase,
yet by the goodness of God, we are far from want.
Now fast forward almost 250 years to the year 1863.
America is in the middle of a tragic and bloody civil war.
And in the midst of the nation being torn in two,
President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation
for a national holiday of Thanksgiving.
Imagine the midst of all of that chaos and all of that division,
he said, we need to stop and give thanks.
Here's part of what he wrote.
The year that is drawing towards its close
has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields
and healthy skies.
To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed,
that we are prone to forget the source from which they come,
which are of so extraordinary a nature
that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften
even the heart which is habitually
insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.
It has seemed to me fit and proper,
then, that they should be solemnly, reverently,
and gratefully acknowledged.
In the middle of civil war, despite three years of fighting,
Lincoln says, we are still a blessed people,
so blessed in so many ways by the gracious hand of God.
So then he says, I do therefore invite my fellow citizens
in every part of the United States, north and south,
and also those who are at sea and those who are so journeying
in foreign lands to set apart and observe
the last Thursday of November as a day of thanksgiving
and praise to our loving and generous Father
who dwells in the heavens.
Amen.
In a time of great adversity.
So with that backdrop, here's what
I want to ask you a couple of questions.
I want you to try, we do this a lot at Oak Hill.
Put yourself in the shoes of people
who lived at a different time and a different culture
so you can kind of understand what they're going through.
What do you think thankfulness looked like for the pilgrims
in 1621?
What did it look like for them to be thankful?
A single meal?
A single meal on any given day?
One set of clothes to help ward off the cold?
A small, drafty home made of wooden planks with a thatch
roof and probably just a dirt floor?
All of your family crammed into this one small space?
Or simply this, we didn't have to bury anyone today?
Thank you, Lord.
What about 1863?
What would thankfulness have looked like for soldiers
who were still on the battlefield?
Or families back home on the homestead
wondering what's happening?
Or slaves in chains on plantations in the South?
What would thankfulness have been like?
Well, I'm still alive.
I haven't received a gruesome injury
or been taken captive in battle.
I haven't got any word that my husband fell
at Gettysburg or Vicksburg.
I haven't been whipped or beaten today.
Thank you, Lord.
Let me back up historically now and go biblical on you.
We've been preaching through the Psalms recently.
And one of the most common themes of the Psalms is what?
Praise and thanksgiving.
We heard it in our call to worship this morning
from Psalm 100.
So what would thankfulness have looked
like for the ancient Israelites in 1,000 BC?
Well, the Philistines haven't attacked us recently.
Enough rain fell to harvest our food for the winter
so that we'll get by.
We have a sheep or a goat worthy of bringing
to the temple for sacrifice, just one.
But we have one.
Thank you, Lord.
How about the time of Christ in the New Testament?
What would thankfulness have looked
like for a Jewish family living in Galilee in the first century?
Simple roof over our heads, a community
of faith and a synagogue, being left alone by the Romans
at least for a time, no invasions on our northern border.
Thank you, Lord.
And with all that in mind, counting our blessings,
now consider you and I. What does thankfulness
look like in your life today?
With all the conveniences, the general ease of life
that we have, what are you truly thankful for?
And then the follow-up question, how often
do you thank the Lord for all that He provides for you?
You probably know this already, but most people in America
are completely blind to the many blessings
that God graciously showers on them from His common grace.
And sadly, it's true of professing Christians as well.
We awake in comfortable beds.
We see that the sun is shining outside,
and we go to our coffee maker, and we pour a cup,
and we just turn a handle, and we have a hot shower
each and every morning.
But we don't give thanks to God.
We hear the birds chirping outside.
We see flowers and trees and hills all around us.
We have multiple sets of clothes for every season
that we encounter each year.
We live in a safe environment with relatively few threats,
but we don't thank God.
We drive cars that take us places at 65 miles an hour.
While the interior temperature of that car
is heated and cooled to our pleasure,
we travel down roads that are paved.
We have grocery stores and restaurants
on every corner in this valley.
We can just walk in and buy any food that we want,
but we don't give it a moment's thought
that God has provided those things for us.
At times, we grumble about our jobs,
about our housing situation, how busy our schedules are,
not realizing that there are people all over this world
today who would do anything to have a job like yours,
a home like yours, and a life like yours.
We wish we could have this or that material thing,
but life is so expensive, we say,
and we find ourselves dissatisfied and discontent
while forgetting how wealthy we really are
and how much we do have relative to other cultures
and other times in human history.
So whether a person is a believer and a follower of Christ
or not, this one fact remains for every single human being.
Our gracious creator has blessed each of us
far more than we realize and far more than we deserve.
Grab your Bibles.
I want to look at just a couple of passages of scripture
this morning to help us start to think about Thanksgiving.
And we're going to start in the Gospel of Luke, Luke chapter
17.
We're going to read a familiar story to many of us,
the story of the 10 lepers.
But before we jump in, let me just say that as a preacher,
when you take on the subject of thankfulness,
there's very few new things that I can say about it.
We all know we should be thankful, right?
I mean, even the most hardened pagan is taught as a child,
you should be thankful.
To who or what, I don't know.
But you should be thankful.
We know, right?
So there's not a whole lot of new things I can say.
So this message is not going to deliver any brand new truths
or mind-blowing insights.
What I want to do this morning is just
exposit some scripture, give you some examples,
and then get out of the way for the Holy Spirit
to convict your hearts about this issue of giving thanks.
And maybe you do wonderful at this, and maybe you don't.
But I'm going to let the Holy Spirit do that work.
All right, Luke chapter 17.
Let's start at verse 11.
So Jesus has been traveling the land with his disciples,
teaching them as he goes.
And verse 11 says, while he was on the way to Jerusalem,
he was passing between Samaria and Galilee, right?
The two provinces to the north of Judea.
As he entered a village, 10 leprous men who stood
at a distance met him, and they raised their voices,
saying, Jesus, master, have mercy on us.
Now, it's important to note that the Greek word for master
here is epistates.
It's a term of admiration.
It's for an overseer or a master or commander.
It's not kurios, which would be translated lord,
but it's a respectful thing.
Verse 14, when he saw them, when Jesus saw them,
he said to them, go and show yourselves to the priests.
Now, remember, when you had leprosy in that day,
you were, in Jewish culture, you were ceremonially unclean.
And even if you were healed, you had
to go to the priests at the temple
and go through this extensive ritual of cleansing
before they would give you their stamp of approval
and you'd be allowed back into the worshiping community.
But this must have seemed like a strange command to these men
because Jesus says, go to the priests
while they're still leprous.
Right?
He hasn't healed them yet.
And they do.
They go.
Jesus says, go, show yourselves to the priests in your
condition, and they go.
Verse 14, as they were going, they were cleansed.
Imagine what that was like.
Imagine their skin healing in those moments.
By the way, that's an impressive healing power,
that Jesus didn't have to touch their skin to heal them.
Verse 15, now one of them, when he
saw that he had been healed, he turned back,
glorifying God with a loud voice.
And he fell on his face at Jesus' feet,
giving thanks to him.
And then look at this last statement.
He was a Samaritan.
That's interesting, right?
This one healed leper was not Jewish.
Now, maybe the other nine were.
We don't know.
But this one was not.
He was from Samaria.
A hated Samaritan.
And Luke, I think, is pointing this out
in the flow and context of his gospel.
He's showing that the salvation of the Lord
was open to all who will call upon the name of the Lord,
first to the Jew, but also to the Gentiles,
to a Samaritan like this.
And it seems that this man's praise is very authentic,
in some sense, by calling him master.
He understands that Jesus is a great man that
has the power to heal.
But look who he gives glory to.
To God.
He gives glory to God.
And he does it with a loud voice.
He doesn't care what people think about him.
He's just gone through the greatest transformation
of his life.
And he is going to shout about it.
And he doesn't care what people think about him
or who's concerned about what's your problem.
He's been healed.
And then he approaches Jesus.
And I have tried to picture this scene in my mind's eye
so many times.
Imagine this.
How grateful this man must have been.
Guys, his entire life has changed.
He has been reborn, able to join the worshiping community.
You could imagine how he must have approached Jesus
with head bowed, absolute humility,
how he must have looked up into Jesus' eyes with tears
coming down his cheeks.
And he falls on his face at Jesus' feet.
He takes the posture of what?
Of worship.
And rightfully so.
Listen, he's done nothing to deserve this, right?
All he did was cry out.
But he has done nothing to deserve this healing.
It is a gift of mercy from God.
He's received undeserved favor from the Lord.
What do we call that?
We call that grace.
Now, do you see yourself in this story?
Do you see yourself?
Now, not saying you were once a physical leper,
but spiritually you certainly were.
Certainly.
And by his grace, you've received
a gift of spiritual healing and salvation.
You too have been given a whole new life.
That's part of what this story illustrates for us.
But then we have the tragic news in verse 17.
Jesus answered and said, were there not 10 who were cleansed?
But the nine, where are they?
Was no one found who returned to give glory to God
except this foreigner, this Samaritan?
And he said to the man who worshiped him, stand up and go.
Your faith has made you well.
So we have a shocking example of ingratitude here, don't we?
This is a general truth for all of us to take note of.
There are far more people prone to ask for mercy
in a time of need than to praise God
once that need has been met.
When we get desperate, we'll cry out to God.
But once the need gets met, what will we tend to do?
Just move on.
It's like the old story of the man who was lost in the woods
for a time.
And later on, he was describing to a friend
about how scared he was.
And he was really worried he was going
to die out there in the forest.
And so as a last ditch effort, he fell to his knees
and he prayed to the Lord and he cried out for help.
And the friend said, so did God deliver you?
He said, oh, no, no, no.
He didn't have to.
About an hour later, a ranger came by
and showed me the way out.
Right?
Didn't even recognize it.
Did not even recognize it.
The great Oswald Chambers once said this.
Troubles nearly always make us look to God.
His blessings are apt to make us look elsewhere.
Think about that for a second.
Is that true in your life?
I have a need.
I will cry out to God.
But all the things that we're given and provided for,
even answers to prayer, oftentimes, we
will look elsewhere to give credit for them.
So here's one of the things I want
to say to you this morning, you guys.
For everyone here, we are all in a battle every day
to be thankful.
And maybe you've never thought of it that way.
We are in a battle for thankfulness every single day.
Although we were born again to a new life by the Spirit,
guys, we have to recognize this.
We still have this remnant of the flesh operating within us.
Paul talks about this in the book of Galatians.
Galatians 5, right?
The spirit and the flesh are at war with each other
so that we don't do everything that we wish we could do.
Right?
They set themselves against each other.
That battle is taking place within us.
And Paul says, therefore, walk by the spirit
so that you will not carry out the desires of the flesh.
So we've got to walk by the spirit in this battle
for thankfulness.
Now, it probably is smart for us to stop for a second
and say, OK, well, what are, where
is the battle for thankfulness?
What are the enemies that we have
that are fighting against us in terms of thankfulness?
Well, let me give you a list of them.
Let me give you eight of them.
The first one is pride.
Pride works against our spirit of thanksgiving.
We tend to credit ourselves for everything that we have.
And we may not even recognize it as pride, but it is.
We say, well, it's my intellect and my planning
and my hard work that made it happen.
I'm sure God was there.
I'm sure he approved.
But I made it happen.
Number two is prosperity.
And obviously, this one will naturally flow out of pride.
How much do I really need to acknowledge God
when I already have so much?
When I have so much success, do I really
need to thank God for it?
So the pride flows into prosperity.
I'm not saying that you can't be thankful when
you're prosperous, but it's hard to be a rich man
and enter the kingdom of God, isn't it?
We all know that teaching, right?
OK, good.
Number three, entitlement.
Entitlement.
This is when you get to that place where you say,
well, look, I deserve a certain amount of things in life,
at least the basics.
And I'm a child of God, so somehow my Father in heaven
is obligated to give me some things to provide for me.
So why would I thank Him for scraps
when He could give me everything that I want?
And I feel entitled to things.
And that leads to number four, discontentment.
I'm just not happy with what I have.
I am not satisfied.
I am not fulfilled by the things that God has chosen to give me.
It's not enough.
I want so much more.
And until God, now, look, we would never say this out loud,
so check your heart.
This is an internal conversation.
Until God starts to fulfill my desires, not just my needs,
but my wants and my desires, I don't
see how I can be thankful.
I'm discontent.
The next one will lead to even greater discontentment.
Comparison.
This is where the whole life isn't fair
mantra comes into play.
Well, why is God blessed them and not me?
I do more in the church than they do.
This can take you down into a very deep spiral.
It will steal your joy.
It will cause you to be blind to the good things
that you do have.
Because you only have eyes on what's happening down here
on Earth in other people's lives,
but your eyes aren't up on Christ in the heavens.
Comparison.
Number six, having a good heart.
Number six, having a critical spirit.
This is when you just can't see good in anything.
So you become the proverbial grumbler.
You can't be thankful for the good gifts
that God has brought into your life,
because in every single thing, you pick it apart.
It could be better.
It could be more.
I'm not happy with it.
You just don't find the good in things.
Number seven is worry or fear.
It's really difficult to stop and be thankful
when you live in a constant state of worrying
about what is around the corner.
When you live in a state of worry and fear,
you will grip onto everything as if you're in control,
and by doing that, you will fail to see how God does it work,
how He is the one who is sovereignly sustaining you
and providing for you.
You're trying to hold onto it because you're fearful.
Now, maybe you see yourself in a little bit
in some of those seven things, and it's good.
You can take a picture of it.
You can say, okay, I need to work on these things.
It's good, but I saved the best to last,
because it's probably the most common one, busyness.
And we might say this is forgetfulness,
because of the pace of our lives.
We live in it, guys, compared to previous generations,
we live in an age of great temptation,
because we have so much going on in our lives.
We think living in the modern world is an advantage,
and it is to some extent.
It's also a disadvantage because we don't slow down much
to really think about things, to really count our blessings.
So busyness gets in the way, right?
We just don't pay attention to the blessings
because we gotta get to the next thing,
or we gotta meet all these responsibilities
and all these obligations.
So we don't take time to reflect on things and give thanks.
And let me just say with this one,
you know when it will sneak up on you?
When you're not in the Word,
when your prayer life has diminished,
when you're not involved in the body life in the church,
when you're not walking by the Spirit,
when you're just going through life day to day,
again, with your eyes fixed down here,
that's when you're gonna fall into this pit.
Busyness, forgetfulness.
You will end up taking every blessing
that God has given you, and you will take it for granted.
So that's a really important list to look at
and to sort of process with the Holy Spirit in your life.
Okay, let's turn it positive now.
Let's talk about the other side of the coin.
What does it look like when we're winning the battle
for thankfulness?
Well, first of all, let's acknowledge a very simple fact.
Let's all agree on this.
God's people are thankful people.
Can we say amen?
God's people are a thankful people.
And it's for this simple reason.
Above all other people on the earth,
we realize how much we've been given
and how little we deserve it.
Because we know God and we know ourselves.
That's just a basic fact.
We are thankful because of all the Bible tells us,
repeatedly, in both Old and New Testaments, by the way,
that God is sovereign over all things
and he's the giver of every good gift.
He does as he pleases.
He oversees every detail of our lives.
He is the source of every good thing given,
the Bible says, every spiritual blessing.
And he is presently working all things
after the counsel of his perfect will.
So we start with the truth that our God
is worthy of being thanked.
And his children are commanded to thank him.
Centuries ago, Martin Luther wrote this incredible piece.
It was a commentary on the Apostles' Creed.
And it's one of the most concise yet complete statements
about thankfulness that I have ever read.
So I wanted to share it with you.
It's not long, but I want you to listen
to the scope of his argument here.
Here's what Luther writes.
He says, I believe that God has created me
and all that exists.
That he has given and still has given.
He has given and still preserves to me body and soul,
eyes, ears, and all my limbs, my reason, and all my senses.
So everything about both Luther
and every other human being, mind, body, and spirit.
And also, he says, clothing and shoes,
food and drink, house and home, wife and child,
land, cattle, you guys all got your cows?
Cattle and all my property.
So God is also in charge of all the material things
that Luther has.
And then he goes on.
That he provides for me richly and daily
with all the necessities of life.
He protects me from all danger
and preserves and guards me against all evil.
So do you get this so far?
Mind, body, and spirit, every material blessing,
provision, protection, and sustenance.
And, and, all this out of what?
Pure, paternal, divine goodness and mercy
without any merit or worthiness of mine.
And there you see God's motivation
for the way he blesses you and provides for you.
It is his perfect fatherly character
to provide for his children.
Not because we're worthy of it, right?
Not because we deserve it.
And then Luther ends with how we should respond.
For which I am duty bound to thank, praise, serve,
and obey him.
Right?
Super concise but very broad in scope.
So listen, do you have eyes that can see?
Do you have a mind that can think?
Do you have shoes on your feet?
It looks like it.
Do you have a place to lay your head at night?
Do you have food on your table?
Luther says then thank him and praise him
and serve him and his people and obey God's commands
because they're given to you not as a heavy weight
but as a blessing to you.
And this is one of the key ways that we as believers
grow in our knowledge of God, grow in our enjoyment of God.
First we recognize that he's the source of all these things
and then we consider, and maybe you've never done this
before, consider what God has given you.
What does that say about him?
What does that tell you about your Lord and your master?
What does it tell you about his divine character?
When you take stock of all the things that you truly have,
all the things that you count on daily, take for granted.
When you look at the things that you have,
when you look at that scope of how God has blessed you,
you think what does this tell me about him?
And if you start to think about that and meditate on that,
what that will do is stir up in you
praise and worship in your heart.
And it's important for us to understand guys,
when we talk about being thankful,
it's not just a tip of the cap to God.
We do this easily, right?
Oh, I thank God for everything, for my home and my wife
and my church, that's great.
But it's more than that.
Thankfulness is an act of worship.
It's more than just a tip of the cap.
Every day when we give thanks,
it should take us beyond just acknowledging God
to worshiping him, to enjoying him,
as we learn more about him
through the things that he gives us.
And we saw this as a common theme
throughout the Psalms, didn't we?
The psalmist would often start with very specific things
that God had done to bless his people
and then he would,
and Psalm 103 is a great example of this,
then unfold for us all of the attributes of God
that led him to do those things, right?
Here's what God has done to bless his people.
This is why he does it.
And the psalmist would go on to talk about
his great divine attributes, his heart for his people.
So we hear, for example,
it's because God is filled with loving kindness,
steadfast love for his people,
that he is righteous, that he is just,
that he is merciful and he is gracious and more.
So a sound theology of thanksgiving
becomes for the believer a conduit of communion with God.
Think about this for a second.
Thankfulness is a conduit to abide more and more
with the Lord, to come into his presence,
to spend time with him,
to thank him for all of your blessings, all the things,
each and every day that he's given to you,
all those little things that you take for granted.
Sit with him in those things.
Abide with him and commune with him.
So that's the enjoyment side of thankfulness.
But the other thing that we have to talk about
this morning and recognize that because of our busy lives
and because of how stubborn we can be,
sometimes we just have to recognize thankfulness
as an act of our will, a decision that we make,
a decision that we make to choose joy, to give thanks,
and not to do it empty-headedly, is that a word?
But based on evidence we have in Scripture
and evidence we have in our lives, right?
Those two things matter.
We make a decision to give thanks to God,
but we can look at Scripture and see why we should do that
and we can also look at our lives and say,
yeah, I've seen that happen in my life.
God has been so good to me.
So for example, Paul says famously in Philippians 4,
rejoice in the Lord when?
Always.
That's an act of the will.
I'm always gonna rejoice.
And in case you dozed off and you missed
that important command, he repeats himself.
Again I say, rejoice.
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything
by prayer and supplication with what?
Thanksgiving.
Let your requests be made known to God.
So friends, what we do is we steward our minds
and our hearts and intentionally direct them
to meditate on the gracious ways that God has blessed us.
It's a decision that we make.
We choose joy and if we have worries,
we take them to the Lord in prayer as we thank him
for the ways he's taken care of us in the past.
You see that?
We all have worries.
I have worries, things that are on my heart,
but I can look to the past and go,
Lord, you've been so faithful and good.
I can thank you for all the ways that you have bailed me out,
all the ways that you have blessed me more than I deserve.
And now because this thing is on my heart
and I'm starting to feel anxious,
I can come to you with that Thanksgiving
and I can lay it before you
and let the peace of Christ rule my heart.
Such an important, such a simple, simple teaching,
but so important for our lives.
It's an act of our will.
Because we don't have a promise in life
that everything's gonna go well, right?
That we're gonna be free of pain or free of trials,
yet we are called to rejoice
and to come to the Lord with thankfulness.
Paul writes something similar in 1 Thessalonians 5.
Rejoice always, pray constantly,
and give thanks in everything.
For this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.
So I hope you caught that.
For every single person in the room this morning,
this is God's will for your life.
How often do we say that?
I don't know what God's will is.
Okay, well, here we go.
Rejoice, pray, and give thanks.
You can at least start there.
That is God's will for your life, for every one of us.
Now upon reading this verse,
what we try to do sometimes is we say,
well, how can I dilute the language here?
I mean, I can't really give thanks in everything, right?
This is our flesh again, rising up.
Well, everything?
Yeah, everything.
But let's be honest,
not everything in life is going to
easily produce a thankful spirit in us.
Some things are just brutally hard to endure.
But note the important distinction here.
Paul's command isn't to give thanks for every circumstance,
but in every circumstance.
You see that?
We wouldn't give thanks for evil that comes upon us.
I don't give thanks for a cancer diagnosis.
I don't give thanks for a tragic accident.
But recognizing God's providence over all things,
we give him thanks in those circumstances.
We give thanks in the midst of that type of difficulty.
And friends, there's always something
to give thanks to God for.
Even in the midst of the hardest thing you can imagine,
there's always something to praise God for.
That God is always working in every situation
to bring good to those who trust him and belong to him.
But I think it's so important to say,
when we talk about thankfulness,
if we don't go deeper, we should say this,
that Christians are not called to be Stoics,
that are just indifferent to pain,
that just walk around saying,
oh, everything's fine all the time.
Sometimes it's not.
We will at times experience very real hurt
and disappointment and confusion and failure.
And the Bible does tell us that there is a time
and a season to lament and to sit in grief
and to express to the Lord how bad things are.
In fact, when we looked at the Psalms, we saw that, right?
How often did David lament worshipfully before the Lord?
But through all those times,
we can and we must rightfully give thanks to God
in those circumstances, even the hardest ones,
because we can view the hardships of life
in light of the much bigger plan
that God is sovereignly ordaining,
where we're promised that he is working all things together
for our ultimate good.
Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next month,
but for our ultimate good, he's working in that thing.
What I found over the years,
in pastoral ministry, is this is something of a learned skill.
I look back on my life, I didn't do this well
when I was most of your age.
But over time, you grow in this.
Over time, you see a pattern of God's faithfulness
in your life, and it gets easier,
and you get stronger in your perseverance
as the years go by.
And again, what I love is,
God doesn't just give us a command in Scripture and say,
hey, gut it out and follow this command.
He says, you know what, let me give you a couple examples.
Let me give you a couple examples that you can follow.
He gives us Paul.
How many of you guys thought Paul had an easy life?
Nobody believes that.
This is a guy that was constantly persecuted
under immense pressure, suffering at every step,
yet he writes in 2 Corinthians 2,
thanks be to God, who always, always, always, always,
leads us in triumphal procession in Christ,
and through us spreads everywhere
the fragrance of the knowledge of him.
That was Paul's goal.
He'd suffer, but Christ is always triumphing, he said.
And Peter, how many of you guys think
Peter lived an easy life?
He gives us a reason to be thankful
for grief and all kinds of trials,
telling us that it's through those hardships
that our faith is proved genuine,
will result in praise, glory, and honor
when Jesus Christ is revealed.
So here's the, can I just give you a bottom line?
So if we're found in Christ,
we can always be thankful for at least three things.
There's many, many more, but at least three things.
Number one, that my circumstance
is not as bad as it could be.
Am I right?
Number two, that somehow God is at work
in what's happening right now.
And number three, that every circumstance
I have to endure down here on the earth
will ultimately be swallowed up
by the glory of eternal life in heaven.
That's a minimum of three things you can thank God for.
But there's so much more, even in hard times, amen?
Okay, one last scripture I wanna look at.
Turn your Bibles over to Colossians 3.
This last passage sort of encapsulates
the teaching on this subject.
This is one of my favorite chapters
in the New Testament, by the way.
We're just gonna look at four verses, 12 to 15.
This section of Paul's letter is so beautiful
and so practical for all of us,
instructions in the Christian life.
So let's just work through it one verse at a time.
Colossians 3, verse 12.
So it's those who have been chosen of God,
holy and beloved.
What does that mean?
It means that what follows is a set of instructions
for every single Christian.
Not just leaders, not just pastors,
but for every Christian in every congregation.
All those who have been chosen by the Father
and are loved dearly by Him.
Do you believe that, by the way?
Do you believe that if you've been chosen by God,
you were dearly beloved in His eyes?
You are.
Write it down, mark it down, seal it in your heart.
So here's what you should do, Christian.
Put on a heart of compassion, kindness,
humility, gentleness, and patience.
Those first two words are the key.
Put on.
An act of the will.
Put these things on.
Now the Spirit will strengthen you in this
and grow you in these things,
but it's a decisive act of your will to say,
I'm gonna put these things on.
Now earlier in the chapter,
he talked about putting some things off, ungodly things,
but now he says, put on this set of attributes right here,
these five things.
And this is consistent throughout the Bible.
It's a double motion, right?
In the Christian life.
Putting off the old self, putting on the new.
Killing one thing, bringing another to life.
Consistent throughout the New Testament.
By the way, both of those things have to happen.
We don't do one to the exclusion of the other.
We put off and we put on.
Both are required.
The most effective way to force sins out of your life
is to crowd them out with new affections.
Say that again.
The most effective way to force sin out of your life
is to crowd them out with new affections
that lead to new behaviors.
So we kill covetousness, for example,
by practicing generosity.
We put to death anger by consistently practicing mercy
and forgiveness.
Does that make sense?
Putting off and putting on.
And each of the qualities mentioned in this verse,
notice how they get expressed in relationship
to other people, especially those in your local church.
Look around.
Those five things were to put on in our relationships
with the people in this room.
Even if they're difficult to get along with.
Even if they're not like you.
Even if they have different likes and dislikes.
This is what we do as a decision of our will, to put on.
And as we grow in maturity in our faith,
we're strengthening the inner man to love
and to serve others in those five ways.
Let me say them again.
Compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.
And the more thankful we are for God's grace in our lives,
the more committed we'll be to doing those things.
So it actually starts with thankfulness.
Lord, thank you for your grace in my life.
Thank you for the way you're strengthening me.
Now help me to put these things on
so I can love other people.
Verse 13.
Bearing with one another, he adds that on top of it.
And forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint
against anyone, just as the Lord forgave you,
so also should you forgive.
Now this is obvious, right?
When we begin to understand the staggering debt
that Jesus has washed away on our accounts,
when we really grasp that, how crazy that is
that God has washed my record clean,
we will have joy in extending forgiveness to other people.
And if we struggle with having joy to forgive others,
it's because we haven't understood fully
what Christ has done for us.
And so we practice that.
We study that over and over again.
And as we practice that radical form of forgiveness,
we find it easier to bear with people in the church,
to bear with people who might be struggling,
to bear with people who may be immature in their faith walk
right now.
We bear with them, we endure with them,
we come alongside them, we don't reject them,
come alongside them and say, how can I help?
I know it's not easy.
It's not easy.
But this is a supernatural kind of love
that Paul's talking about here.
We'll get to that.
Verse 14.
Beyond all these things, as if that's not enough,
put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.
So Paul talks about love as the summary
of all those other things, right?
You can think of those attributes,
those five things plus bearing with and forgiving
as a set of garments that we put on.
And then the last thing we put on is the outer coat,
and that's love.
And it sort of wraps everything else together.
That's the Christ-like life.
And this is what we have to recognize.
All of this, guys, I just said it,
as a supernatural form of love.
Listen, we all, we all by nature love certain things.
We love ourselves first and foremost.
But even the most pagan unbeliever loves his or her spouse.
They love their children.
They love their country.
And that's all wonderful.
But look at this type of love.
This is the type of love that's compassionate,
kind, humble, gentle, and patient
with people that sometimes hurt us,
with people who sometimes disappoint us,
who are difficult to get along with.
Guys, this is a distinctly Christian love
because it's the type of love that Christ loved us with.
Right?
When you were unworthy,
when you were ungrateful,
when you were difficult,
Christ loved you.
And it's the same type of love
with which he continues to love us
even when we choose to sin against him.
He continues to love us.
So this is a supernatural love
that Paul's describing here in Colossians 3.
Last verse, verse 15.
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts
to which indeed you were called in one body.
So that's peace in your heart
and that's peace with others in the local church.
And then look at how he sums up the thought process here.
What is the final phrase?
And be thankful.
That too is supernatural in nature is what he's saying.
It's a distinct mark of a true believer.
We walk in thankfulness, friends,
both as a duty in response to the command
and as a habit cultivated over time
as we keep coming back to the cross
and we keep looking to Christ
and we keep seeing how he has loved us
as we see how he has forgiven us,
how he has been compassionate with us
and kind to us and gentle with us and patient with us.
And it becomes a habit over time.
The thankfulness of a true believer
will find itself being expressed more and more
in every facet of our lives.
It ought to spread throughout your life in every area.
Think about it.
Thankful in your private devotion time.
That should be a regular part
of your private devotion time, thankfulness.
In your corporate worship, when you come here on Sunday,
as you enter those doors, you should already be thankful.
But then let the singing of praise songs,
let the preaching of the word make you even more thankful.
In your relationships in the church,
as you see friends here,
as you see people who have served you,
as you see people who have encouraged you and loved you,
and yes, when you see people who are difficult,
we're thankful.
In the practical service, in the meeting of needs of others,
in the workplace, in the home, we should be thankful.
How about in marriage?
Should we not practice thankfulness in our marriages?
Always thinking the best of that spouse
that God has gifted to you, that one flesh partner,
for life, thank you, Lord.
And in parenting, of course, thankfulness,
not just thanking God for our children as gifts,
though they are, but parents,
also in leading your children, setting an example for them.
Kids, this is what thankfulness looks like.
This is what thankfulness looks like in life.
In every facet of life, we give thanks.
Let me wrap up with this quick story.
This is a great story.
13 years before he gave his heart and his life to Christ,
the great John Wesley, great man of church history.
So when he was an unbeliever,
he had a very impactful conversation with a man
he never knew the man's name, but he writes about it later.
He wrote it one night.
Some people would call it a chance encounter.
He doesn't see it that way.
But Wesley discovered that this man had one set of clothes,
and on the day that he had this conversation with him,
the man hadn't eaten yet.
And yet the man said to him
that his heart was full of gratitude to God.
Now for an unbeliever, that's shocking.
Like, really?
And Wesley said to him,
thank God when you barely have anything to wear
and nothing to eat.
And then with sarcasm dripping, he said,
oh, well, what else do you thank him for?
This is what Wesley said the man's answer was.
I thank him that he's given me life and my being,
a heart to love him and a desire to serve him.
Just one simple random conversation
that led to John Wesley,
at that moment he realized, he writes about this,
he says, I realized there was more to this Christianity thing
than I'd ever thought before.
And he never forgot that conversation.
13 years later, he would give his life to Christ
and minister to people for decades.
We have 12 days now to get our hearts ready
to celebrate Thanksgiving.
12 days to prepare for whatever lies ahead for you.
You're probably gonna sit down somewhere at a table
and you're gonna have a lunch or a dinner,
something like that.
But I want you to think about a couple of questions.
Have you neglected giving thanks to God
for things in the past?
Have you failed to give thanks to God for things in the past?
Is there any form of ingratitude in your heart
that you need to deal with?
In your relationships in the church,
has your thankfulness for God's saving grace in your life
led you to become more compassionate, kind, humble,
gentle, patient, forgiving, and loving?
Most of all, what are you truly thankful for?
What are you truly thankful for this year?
In a moment, I'm gonna put those questions up on the screen
and give you a chance to meditate on them for a few minutes
and to talk to God.
And they're important questions that we should answer,
not just for that meal on November 28th,
but for every day that God grants you breath in your lungs
and a chance to praise his name.
Amen?
Let's bow our heads.
I'll put these questions on the screen
and spend a few moments talking to the Lord.