Giving Thanks in Dark Times

Introduction:

Text: Ephesians 5:20 “Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;”

Richard Wurmbrand was a Polish pastor during WWII and the Communist takeover after the war was over. Refusing to compromise his message, Richard became an enemy in the state. They were forced to meet in secret and evangelize in secret. Eventually, both Richard and his wife Sabina were captured by the communists and disappeared to concentration camps and interrogation centers. Sabina was sent to a labor camp while Richard was tortured on almost a daily basis. According to his own testimony, four of his vertebrae were broken along with other bones, they carved out flesh from portions of his body and burned and cut 18 holes in his body. If you watch the biographical drama of his life Tortured for Christ, you will see him being hung upside down and his feet beaten until they were virtually crippled. He was finally ransomed in 1965 and released. He expressed a confidence that even in the worst of circumstances, God was in control.

We will respond, even in the face of irony and slander, with the sweetness of love. We can afford to take this attitude because good anvils do not fear the blows of many hammers. ~ Richard Wurmbrand

How does someone like that give thanks to God, lift up praise to him in light of all that he went through? How do we give thanks, when our spouse was shot by a robber looking for an easy buck? How do we thank God when someone has sinned against us? How do we thank God when we have been diagnosed with cancer? It’s easy to give thanks when things are going well, but how do we thank God in the most extreme of circumstances. The title of the message this afternoon is “Giving Thanks in Dark Times.”

Context

Whenever I teach through a passage, I want to understand how it fits into the overall structure of the book because its meaning will be affected by the flow of thought that the author is trying to present. Our text verses sometimes suffer from a lack of understanding of how they fit in with the rest of the chapter. Often times they are preached in isolation, but there is a connection to what Paul is trying to say.

Ephesians 5 could be divided into what we call the three walks and really you have four walks in this chapter but one is developed as part of one of the others: walk in love Ephesians 5:2 “And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.” , Walk as children of light Ephesians 5:8 “For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:” and walking in wisdom Ephesians 5:15 “See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,”

Vs 15 introduces the section we are dealing with today: See then- because of what I just said that ye walk circumspectly not as fools but wise- Paul is challenging the Ephesian believers to walk in wisdom, carefully watching how they live. vs 16-21 outline how we are to live wisely:

Redeeming the time

Don’t be drunk with wine

Rather than being drunk with wine, we are to be filled with the Spirit (Vs 18). We are left with the question, what does it look like to be filled with the Spirit.

Walking in the Spirit

Vs 19, 20 and 21 describe what it looks like to walk in the Spirit, or you could say things that are the fruit of walking in the Spirit. The first and the third are not our focus today but I would like to mention them in brief as we develop the text:

The Holy Spirit produces singing in our hearts both publically and privately. Speaking to yourselves- literally speaking among yourselves. A song to the Lord is not just supposed to be a private matter; this is something we share with our brothers and sisters in Christ. I would even dare say that if the song is not coming from your lips, there is something wrong in your relationship to the Spirit. I know some struggle with singing because they think they don’t have a good voice, or they don’t want people to hear them. I am not asking you to sing specials in church, but the Holy Spirit will produce singing on our lips. Do you sit back silently while the congregation joins to sing? Let’s sing with all our hearts because our song is to God and for the benefit of our brothers and sisters in Christ. The song is also a private song- singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord. So you find yourself singing to the Lord inside? Is there a song in your heart?

Submitting yourselves one to another- I will skip to the third fruit of walking in the Spirit from our text. The Holy Spirit will produce an attitude of submission in our hearts, not of rebellion and self-will. Vs 22-chapter 6:9 describe for us what this submission looks like.

Giving thanks always for all things- the third fruit of walking in the Spirit is a thankful heart.

The Command

I. Give Thanks

No less easy for us sometimes is giving thanks to the Lord. As American’s we aren’t generally grateful people. We have a mindset of these are my rights and I deserve to be treated like a King. Reverend Mather Byles on why he wouldn’t support the American Revolution once retorted:

Which is better — to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away or by three thousand tyrants one mile away?

Sometimes just being thankful is really hard to develop when we are not raised to be thankful. Thankfulness is something that we are going to have to choose to do and this can take practice. Sam Crabtree has written a book called Practicing Thankfulness which gives some practical tips for developing thankfulness in our lives. One practice I have had in our family devotions is to have everyone go around and tell something that they are thankful for and then we all sing, Thank you Lord. I want to instill in my children a habit of gratitude in their lives. We also recently did a devotional activity where the children had to pick someone they admired or really appreciated and write a thank you card. I did a word study just on the word thanksgiving in the bible and came up with some observations that might help us understand how to express thanksgiving in our lives:

The root word for thanksgiving in the OT is related to the same word for confess which is something we do with our mouths. Gratitude needs to be spoken not just felt.

b. A sacrifice of thanksgiving was accompanied by a song of thanksgiving. Jer 33:11

Jeremiah 33:11 KJV 1900

The voice of joy, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the voice of them that shall say, Praise the Lord of hosts: for the Lord is good; for his mercy endureth for ever: and of them that shall bring the sacrifice of praise into the house of the Lord. For I will cause to return the captivity of the land, as at the first, saith the Lord.

c. Thanksgiving in prayer- Phil 4:6 “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.”

d. Thanksgiving in exaltation- Psalm 117:2 “For his merciful kindness is great toward us: And the truth of the Lord endureth for ever. Praise ye the Lord.” An outburst of joy and praise.

e. Thanksgiving in writtings- 1 Thess 1:2 “We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers;” Count your blessings- write them out, write a poem about them just between you and God, send someone else a thank-you card for what God has done through that person. We need to develop the practice of gratitude, but true gratitude is going to be produced by walking in the Spirit.

We really need the Spirit if we are going to actually do what is said in this verse. It is one thing to be grateful when someone gives you a sum of money or does something nice for you, but how do we be grateful when the world falls in around us. There are two very controversial and hard words in this verse always and for all things.

2. Always- at every moment we should be living in an attitude of gratitude. That doesn’t mean you have to mutter thank you under your breathe every time you do something or someone does something for you, but there is a difference between a person who constantly feels like they have been dealt a raw deal and someone who is grateful to be alive. They approach life differently. Can we be thankful in the darkest times of our lives? Can we be thankful when we lost a loved one? Can we be thankful when our children hate us? Can we be thankful when we lost our job and can’t find a new one? Can we be thankful when we have been kidnapped like those Christian aid workers in Haiti? What about the children of the Christians in Nigeria who were kidnapped by Boca Haram, raped and forced to marry Muslim men coming back with babies? Can we be thankful then?

3. For all things- How about for all things? Can we be thankful those children were raped? I don’t think that is what the lord is expecting us to do. Just thinking about it, I feel the anger of the Lord rising up as I write these words. In my opinion, for is an unfortunate translation here although it is the normal translation of the word and is found in most translations, it is not the normal word for “for” in Greek. There is a way to understand this verse if you take into account other passages. The word for can be translated concerning as is found in Romans 9:27 “Esaias also crieth concerning Israel, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved:” I may not thank God for the actual pain, suffering, and sin itself; but I can still give thanks concerning it. So what can I be grateful for even in dark circumstances like this:

a. Thankful that God hears 1 Peter 3:12 “For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil.”

b. Thankful that God has a plan Romans 8:28 “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

c. Thankful for God’s grace in every circumstance. 2 Cor 12:9 “And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

d. Thankful for his deliverance from certain circumstances in the end. This isn’t a promise that God will deliver us through every circumstances. Remember the three Hebrew Children: Daniel 3:16-18 “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.”

Conclusion

Even in the darkest of times and the most difficult of circumstances we can give thanks to God for His grace in our lives, but we cannot do it by ourselves. You will never thank God when you are hurting except when the Holy Spirit gives you the strength. When we struggle, it is because our eyes are on the wrong thing. We are not looking to God. We can be grateful to other people for what they do, but ultimately we need to keep our eyes on the Lord and be grateful to Him. The end of the verse says unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I am not asking you to grunt it out and through tight lips say thank you God for this pain. The Holy Spirit will give you the ability to be grateful even when life hurts and it might just be a sign that we aren’t walking with the Spirit as closely as we should if we cannot.