Always and for all things - Eph 5.20

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context of passage … 5.19 - addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart,

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If they cannot be always singing they are always to maintain the spirit of song.

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If they must of necessity desist at intervals from outward expressions of praise, they ought never to refrain from inwardly giving thanks.

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Paul having touched upon the act of singing in public worship, here points out the essential part of it, which isn’t that the songs are old, hymns, projected on a screen, played on the radio, even that they are your favorites …

Thanksgiving is the soul of all acceptable singing.

Note, also that this verse immediately precedes the apostle’s exhortations to believers concerning the common duties of ordinary life.

Eph 5.21 - 21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

The saints are to give thanks to God always, and then to fulfill their duties to their fellow men.

The apostle writes, “Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God,” and then he adds the various branches of holy walking which belong to wives and to husbands, to children and to parents, to servants and to masters; so that it would seem that thanksgiving is a vital part/key to a holy life

He who would serve God must begin by praising God, for a grateful heart is the mainspring/engine/morning jolt of coffee of obedience.

Gratitude and obedience are linked, joined at the hip … impossibility to have one w/o the other

My text is a very appropriate one for this cold morning, when wind and snow conspire against our comfort. We will have days when our lives feel cold, dark, heavy … and we a cozy fire, warm drink, hot meal, chili … we should resolve to set a stout heart against the pelting storm, and determine that if we shiver in body we will at least be warm in heart.

Our thanksgiving is not a summer afternoon poolside … it is the sustaining life of water, air, sustenance

I want us to spend some moments this morning thinking about thanksgiving …

This morning I shall ask you to think over the pleasant duty prescribed; then I shall lead you to think of its spiritual prerequisites, or what is necessary to help a man to give thanks always for all things; and we will close by dwelling upon the eminent excellencies of the duty, or rather of the privilege which is here described.

I. First, let us think of the Pleasant Duty

what it is-giving thanks.

By this is meant the emotion of gratitude and the expression of it either by song, by grateful speech, by the thankful look, which means far more than words can express, or by any other method.

Have you ever been in a moment overwhelmed to the point of tears - tears of joy and thanksgiving … isn’t it amazing that the same channel bodily happens in joy and sorrow

We are to give thanks in our spirit, not from obligation but grateful for all that God does to us and for us.

We are bound to show this gratitude by our actions, for obedience is at once the most sincere and the most acceptable method of giving thanks.

When we do the hard thing, fulfill our duty with joy … thanking God

Sickness, pain with patience … thanking God

Weep with those weep … thanking God

Rejoicing with those who rejoice … thanking God

The continual, unceasing nature of thanksgiving means … that in all things we can give thanks … and if you are having a hard time … remember that we still draw breath, that our salvation is sure … we are declared His children, His heirs

We could give a thousand lives … persecuted, martyred … Let every tongue that has breath praise the Lord … it isn’t a prerequisite to be fancy or eloquent of speech … it isn’t necessary to have deep pockets and bursting bank accounts

Put plainly … we can all give thanks … everyone, on our best and worst days

We may one and all at this moment give thanks unto God our Father. Brethren, let us do so. Now, as we have considered what it is we are to do,

let us notice when we are to do it, notice the centrality of the alls

— “always for all things.” We are to give thanks always.

To give thanks sometimes is easy enough; its easy to be thankful when its sunny and blue skies and we are on vacation and the kids are sleeping we don’t need reminded to do this when the bank account is fat, the table is full, bills are all paid … for we cannot help it.

There are glad days when, if we did not thank God, we should be something worse than fallen men, and should be only fit to be compared with devils.

it is but natural to give thanks. - when our families and friends are health … stock market is up, crypto hasn’t crashed, and our candidates have won all the elections

I want to make sure that we hear this morning … that not all thanksgiving is vocal … not all performed with breath, tongue and voice box … sometimes maybe even most often, thanksgiving is found in the small, daily … actions of our common life … full heart of gratitude … upon waking and sleeping

For parents, strength, siblings, friends, bed to sleep, hot shower to wake … in the promise of new days, and the reflection of the past … in the midst of success and disaster

Please dont’ misunderstand … this isn’t easy, and this isn’t me standing up here saying I’ve got this right all the time

When suffering extreme pain some time ago, a brother in Christ said to me, “Have you thanked God for this?” I replied that I desired to be patient, and would be thankful to recover. “Ah, but,” said he, “’in everything give thanks,’ not after it is over, but while you are still in it, and, perhaps, when you are enabled to give thanks for the severe pain, it will cease.” - spurgeon anecdote

we are called to struggle after the holy joy of heart so as to give thanks unto God unceasingly.

We shall never come to a time in which we shall say: “I will thank God no more.” No. No.

A thousand times No; we could sooner cease to live than to give thanks.

Was not it grand on Job’s part to say — “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord,” even when he had torn his coat, shaved his head in grief

Was not it noble on the part of Paul and Silas, when they were thrust into the inner dungeon, to sing praises there? Backs beaten, legs in cold, iron chains, dark, damp, unlikely they had mattresses and certainly there wasn’t running water and hot meals

nd yet, at midnight, they sang praises unto God so loudly, that the prisoners heard them.

This is thanksgiving … this is praise to God, in the dead of night … praising with bleeding back, bound hands … this is thanksgiving … always and for all things

Instead of that, we too often complain because we do not have more … we don’t respond with thankfulness because don’t see with his eternal eye … we grumble as though our God is harsh and mean and withholds good things from

Give thanks always for all things. We must learn to see the good, to see the opportunities for grateful …

Bless God for his unknown benefits; extol him for favors which you do not see, always giving thanks to God for all things.

Still this is easy; the difficult point is to give thanks to him for the bitter things, for the disguised blessings, for the love that arrives via dear john, and in the shape of a cross …

We are to give thanks for the dark things, the cutting things, the things which plague us and unsettle us

If we exercise the eye of faith and not the dim eyes of our own 5 senses, we shall discover that nothing can be more fatal to us than to be without affliction, and that nothing is more beneficial to us than to be tried as with fire.

Therefore we will glory in tribulations also; we will bless and magnify the name of the Lord that he leads us through the wilderness that he may prove us, and that he is preparing us for glory

“Giving thanks always for all things.” We should say of the Lord, “Let him do what seemeth him good; if he will give us health we will thank him, if he will send us sickness we will thank him. If he indulges us with prosperity or if he tries us with affliction, if the Holy Spirit will but enable us, we will never cease to praise the Lord as long as we live.”

Augustine tells us that the early saints when they met each other would never separate without saying, “Deo gratias! thanks be to God.”

Frequently their conversation would be about the persecutions which raged against them, but they finished their conversation with “Deo gratias!”

Sometimes they had to tell of dear brethren devoured by the beasts in the amphitheatre, but even then they said “Deo gratias!”

Frequently they mourned the uprise of heresy, but this did not make them rob the Lord of his “Deo gratias.”

So should it be with us all the day long. The motto of the Christian should be “Deo gratias!” “Giving thanks always for all things.”

But the text has another word which is important-to whom is this gratitude to be rendered? “Giving thanks for all things to God the Father.” To God.

To man we are bound to render thanks in proportion as he benefits us.

God does not require that in order to be grateful to him we should be ungrateful to our fellow men.

To celebrate one doesn’t require that we diminish the 2ndary for the primary

Gratitude to parents and friends is but gratitude to God, if it be properly rendered with a view to the highest source … who is the giver of parents, life, friends, church.

To neglect the lower would be to spoil the higher gratitude. Yet we should never end with gratitude to men: that were to thank the clouds for rain, instead of blessing the Lord who sends both clouds and showers.

Thus I have expounded the duty itself.

II. Now, briefly, let me speak to you upon The Spiritual Prerequisites which are necessary for the performance of this very pleasant work.

that no man can give thanks always to God, through Jesus Christ, till he has a new heart.

The old heart is an ungrateful one, and even if a man should try with an unrenewed nature to give thanks to God, it would bre impossible

To give thanks to God aright a man must believe that there is a God, he must go further than that, he must feel that God is the author of the good things which he receives; and to give thanks always he must advance yet further and believe that even in seeming evil love is at work.

He must also come to believe in God as present to hear his thanks, or he will soon tire of presenting them. “Thou God seest me” must be printed on the newborn heart, or else there will be no constant giving of thanks to God.

A man who gives thanks to God always for all things, must have a sense of complete reconciliation to God. You cannot bless God till you have heard him say, “I have blotted out thy sins like a cloud, and like a thick cloud thy transgressions.” Lean and false are the thanks which come from an unforgiven heart.

We cannot give thanks to God through Jesus Christ except we have accepted the Mediator. All the thanks commanded in the text are to come up to God through Jesus Christ.

If we reject him, or if we associate him as a Mediator with somebody else, we have gone contrary to God’s way, and we cannot praise God.

To praise God, even the Father, does it not strike you that we must feel the spirit of adoption? Who could praise a person as father whom he does not recognize as father? but he who feels-”Yes, I am the Lord’s child, erring though I be, and my heart saith Abba;” he can praise God indeed.

To the fullest performance of this duty there must be a subordination of ourselves the will of God. We must not desire to have our own way; we must be content to say, “Not my will, but thine be done.”

I cannot give thanks to God always for all things till my old self is put down. While self rules, the hungry horseleech is in the heart, and that is fatal to gratitude. Self and discontent are mother and child. But when thou sayest in thine heart, “I am perfectly resigned to the will of God, my will consents to his will,” then shall thy praise be as the continual sacrifice, and thy thanksgiving shall smoke before him as incense.

III. I only want your attention a few minutes more while I speak upon The Eminent Excellencies of continually giving thanks to God, even the Father.

And the first excellency is, it honors God. A thankful spirit glorifies the Most High. “Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me,” saith the Lord.

We might have imagined that whether we grumbled or complained it would make no difference to God. It would be of no consequence to any one of us what might be the opinion of a little community of ants about us, but God is infinitely more superior to us than we are to emmets; yet he considers that our praising and blessing him renders glory to his name. May we do it with joy and unceasing

There is no higher commendation for any course of action or for any virtue to a Christian man than to tell him that it will honor God. Will it dishonor God? He will shrink from it though mines of gold should tempt him. Will it honor God? The believer rushes forward to it though floods and flames lie in his way.

A grateful spirit is a blessed and yet a cheap way of honoring God, for it brings to us its own return. Like mercy, it is “twice blessed,” it blesses us in the giving and honors God in the receiving. Let the Christian see to it that he abounds in it. Obedience to our text will tend to check us from sin: “Giving thanks always for all things.”

Very well; then there are some places that we must not enter, for it would be blasphemous to be giving thanks there. There are some things which I must not do, for I could not give God thanks for them.

Dishonest business - how can I give God thanks for the miserable dollars earned on the ill gotten advantage of men. To give thanks for the fruit of sin is to blaspheme a holy God.

if the Christian is always to give thanks, he must always be where he can give thanks; and if he is to give God thanks for all things, he must not touch that which he cannot give God thanks for.

I must never grasp the fruit of covetousness,

the gain of dishonesty,

the profit of Sabbath breaking,

the result of oppression; for if I do, I have that for which I may weep and howl before God,

if we looked well to our text, it would, by the power of God’s Holy Spirit, restrain us from sin.

But one of the truest excellencies of a spirit of perpetual thanksgiving is this, that it calms us when we are glad and it cheers us when we are sorrowful-a double benefit;

it allays the feverish heat at the same time that it mitigates the rigorous cold.

If a man be rich, and God has given him a thankful spirit, he cannot be too rich.

If he will give thanks to God, he may be worth millions, and they will never hurt him; and, on the other hand, if a man has learned to give thanks to God, and he becomes poor, he cannot be too poor, he will be able to bear up under the severest penury.

The rich man should learn to find God in all things.

The poor man should learn to find all things in God, and there is not much difference when you come to the bottom of these two causes.

One thing I am sure of, that the more we have of this, the more useful we shall assuredly become.

Nothing has had a greater effect upon the minds of thoughtless men, than the continued thankfulness of true Christians.

Now, to you, this one word: You are guilty and must be punished, unless you find forgiveness. There is before you this morning an altar of sacrifice in the person of Jesus Christ. There are four horns to the altar, looking either way, and whosoever touches the horns of this altar shall live, and live for ever. Jesus Christ is the great altar of sacrifice, a touch of him at this moment will save thee. It is the whole gospel-believe, trust and live, for “whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God”-whosoever trusteth in Christ shall be saved. Come to the altar, where his blood was spilt; come, now, and lay your hands upon its horn-you can but perish there: nay, I must correct myself, you cannot perish there, you must perish anywhere else! Come, then, and rest in Jesus, and the Lord bless you for his dear name’s sake. Amen