Sermon Tone Analysis

IN EVERYTHING GIVE THANKS     1 THESSALONIANS 5:18

 

 

            We gather, this Lord’s Day, to reflect upon an attitude that ought to be true in every believer.

It is an attitude that ought to reflect everyday of our life and not just this week of Thanksgiving.

I am talking about the attitude of gratitude.

Gratitude is being thankful for the things that God has done in our lives.

It is being thankful for the things that God does.

We thank Him for the blessings He bestows upon our lives every single day.

So this morning, I want to turn our attention to a letter written by the Apostle Paul to the believers in Thessalonica.

If you have your Bibles turn with me to 1 Thessalonians 5:18.

Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5:18, *give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you*.

This coming Thanksgiving Day, both believers and non-believers will gather around the dinner table.

Both will offer thanks for the things of life.

Both will be grateful for the things that they have in life such as family, friends, health, material things and the like.

Yet, there will be a vast difference in the thanks that will be offered.

For the Christian, thanksgiving will be offered to God, who is the giver of every good gift and every perfect gift (James 1:17).

But thanks for the unbeliever is quite different.

Paul, in Romans 1, identifies the ungodly as being ungrateful to God.

Listen to his stinging words, “For although they knew God,” (that is in their conscience and the visible creation of things), “they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him” (Rom.

1:21).

In other words, what Paul is saying is that the unbeliever refuses to thank God for everything.

You see there is a difference between the unbeliever and the believer.

The believer is thankful unto God for all things, while the unbeliever is not.

Can I suggest to you that there are several reasons that the unbeliever is not thankful to God?

The first reason that these are ungrateful to God is because they go through life thinking that things happen as a result of luck.

They think it's just a coming together of events over which nothing has control, it just happens to happen that way.

And if it doesn't happen the way it ought to happen for them, they become bitter and complaining and angry and hostile and life takes on a sour dour kind of meaning.

And even though they may try to manipulate the lucky factors of life, they are unsuccessful and so they have no thankfulness at all.

Who is to thank?

You can't thank luck; luck doesn't even have control over itself.

There is no thanks in their heart.

What little good may come to them they attribute to luck and the rest of it they don't like?

The second reason that unbelievers are ungrateful to God is because they think there is some exorable-{ek-ser-uh-buhl} (hopeless) force out there.

These people don’t believe in luck, they are fatalists.

There is some certain inevitability that is preset, maybe by the stars or some other aberration in their own thinking and somehow it's all forced down a track and they fatalistically and reluctantly accept what is utterly inevitable and unchangeable.

And that's the way it will be, it is destiny, don't argue with it.

Who is to thank for whatever good comes in that?

There's no one to thank, it's a nameless force, an unidentifiable movement that has no personhood and so there's no one to thank for anything, good or bad.

The third reason that unbelievers are ungrateful to God is because they believe that somehow they can control their life.

They're the positive thinkers, they're the usually successful people who having been successful, and they're not sure why at first and then they eventually attribute it to their own skill, but everything good that happens to them, they've done it, they've arranged it, they've orchestrated it, they've made it happen, they dreamed it, schemed it, planned it, made it happen, pulled it off.

And all the credit goes to them.

None for God.

After all, what did He have to do with anything?

But the Christian attitude for thanksgiving is quite different.

In fact, for the Christian this ought to be our prevailing attitude toward God.

It is the attitude that every good and perfect gift comes from above.

For the Christian things do not happen by chance.

There is a personal God, who is sovereign, over everything.

He is the One who creates and sustains life.

Also, as Christians we know that there is no impersonal force who has preset the destiny of all human beings.

In fact, Scripture reminds that all things happen for God’s glory.

As Christians, we cannot thank even ourselves because God has given us life and keeps life going for us.

If it was not for God’s grace, then we would not even be here at this present moment.

So thankfulness is a part of the new life that is given to us at salvation.

The inner being has been transformed by the grace of God and should display itself in thankfulness.

Gratitude ought to be a part of the fabric of our life because of all that God has done.

But even as Christians, we can be unthankful.

For the unbeliever it is normal for them not to be thankful, but for the Christian it should be abnormal.

It goes against the grain of the new life, new nature that is given us in Christ Jesus.

Paul says *give thanks in all circumstances*.

This means there are no exceptions and no excuses for giving thanks.

This means no matter the struggle, the trial, the testing, the circumstance, or what happens we are to give thanks to God.

As Christians, we are commanded in Scripture to give thanks.

For example, I can be thankful for the pain that I go through in a surgery if I know that there's healing coming because of it.

I can be thankful for the difficulty I go through in preparation if I know that the product of that preparation is going to change lives.

I can be thankful for the process of pain that I might inflict on my body if I know that in the end I'm going to be healthier because I exercise.

There are many things in life that involve that.

As long as you look at the end result you can be thankful even for a process that's less than happy, joyful.

Paul tells us in Romans 8:28, “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.”

What this means is that God can take the bad thing and work it for our good and eternal glory.

If you live believing that God is at work sovereignly controlling all of the contingencies of life, blending them all together each component to lead to a sovereignly designed goal for your good and glory, then you can handle anything in life and be thankful because you know it fits in to the ultimate plan.

In the Bible, John 9 tells the story of a man who was born blind.

The disciples conversing with Jesus asked the logical question that most of us would ask and that is who sinned the man or his parents.

For the Jews, things that were considered bad happened because someone was living a unrighteous life.

Isn’t that what Job’s friends accused him for the lost of his flock, his family, and his health.

But Jesus said, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

In other words, God allowed this to happen for His purpose.

Many of you know the story of Helen Keller.

She was born in 1882.

I didn’t know until this morning that she didn’t die until 1968.

Helen Keller was born in 1882, and when she was 19 months old, a beautiful, precocious little girl, she caught a fever that so ravaged her and that left her without sight and without the ability to hear.

She was locked into a world of darkness and silence; but she was determined and she was extremely smart.

Now, I want to pause right now.

Fathers of daughters, can you feel the intensity of what is going on here?

Can you imagine that precious little girl that you hold in your arms and you delight in, and suddenly, she is locked away from you in darkness and silence.

And she was determined to be able to communicate with the outside world, and she began to be able to imitate to her family things that she wanted.

When she wanted a piece of bread she would make a hand motion as if she were cutting a piece of bread to let her family know.

When she wanted ice cream, she would wrap her arms around herself and she would shiver.

And she developed about sixty different motions that she could do in order to communicate with her family, but it frustrated her as she understood that people communicated with their lips and she couldn’t communicate with her lips to her family.

And as she grew, she became more and more frustrated and more and more violent because of her frustration.

She would smash things; she would throw objects.

She was out of control.

At age seven, her parents got her a tutor to help her learn to communicate.

And very instrumental in Helen Keller’s ability to cope with this was her trust in the living God.

Now, my friends, a person in Helen Keller’s situation would be very tempted to become bitter and angry, and the last thing that would be on the agenda for a person like that might well be gratefulness and thankfulness.

But I want you to listen to what Helen Keller once said.

She said, “For three things I thank God every day of my life.

Thanks that He has vouchsafed me knowledge of His works; deep thanks that He has set in my darkness the light of faith; deepest thanks that I have another life to look forward to--a life joyous with light and flowers and heavenly song.

Helen Keller may not have been thankful /for/ the circumstance that God had dealt to her, but she was thankful /in/ that circumstance.

And that is precisely what Paul is saying to us.

In /every/ circumstance, we are to give thanks.

So when we can begin to see the end results of what God is doing by bringing all things together for our good, then we can learn to be thankful for everything.