11-18-07 And Give Thanks

This Thursday is Thanksgiving

and with it comes the first major event

of what we commonly refer to as the Holiday Season.

Depending on how this time of year affects you,

my reminder of that fact

has either just triggered in you a surge of warm fuzzies,

or else it has caused your blood pressure to ratchet up a few notches.

If you had the second response,

please accept my apologies.

I use to think that it was the Holidays themselves

that created difficulties in our lives,

and certainly sometimes they do.

There’s nearly always a significant increase in expenses,

and, if you do any entertaining, a whole lot more work,

not to mention the sometimes difficult people-problems that come up.

But the more I’ve thought about it over the years,

the more I’ve decided that the holidays themselves don’t really change things all that much.

All they really do is to briefly amplify what already exists in our lives.

This time of year simply cranks up the volume

on whatever is already there.

What’s working well,

what’s good, and warm, and rich, and right

is even better, and warmer, and richer at this time of the year.

We become even more keenly aware

of the incredible value of those relationships in our lives that are healthy,

the ones where there is a true exchange of love.

And the things that aren’t working well are amplified as well.

If we are battling loneliness

then that loneliness is intensified against the backdrop of colored lights and Christmas Carols.

If we have troubled relationships in our lives

then that turmoil that already exists

becomes more intense, more visible during this time of the year.

But the Holidays don’t really create anything new,

they just intensify what already exists.

I few years ago I offered you some survival strategies for the holidays

and I may go back sometime during the next few weeks

and see if any of those thoughts are worth revisiting again this year,

but for this morning

I want to pick up a theme

that is directly related to Thanksgiving itself - that of giving thanks.

This Thursday there will very likely be countless family scenes across our nation

in which the family members gather around the table

and before dinner begins

someone will say,

“Let’s all share what we’re most thankful for!”

And then someone will say,

“Well, I’m most thankful for my family.”,

and someone else will say,

“I’m most thankful that we can live in this wonderful country that we do.”,

and someone else will say,

“I’m really thankful for this wonderful meal.”,

and someone else will be thankful for a warm place to live,

or a job,

or good health,

or that the whole family could be together this year,

or possibly that certain family members were NOT able to make it.

And then probably someone will pray a prayer of thankfulness for all of the above

and then everyone will eat,

and they will all feel as though they truly have thankful hearts.

And if that kind of scene takes place at your house this year

I’m certainly not suggesting that there’s anything wrong about it.

In fact, it can often be an enjoyable part of the whole celebration.

But, unfortunately, expressing thankfulness for some external circumstance in our lives

is not the same thing

as truly having a heart of thankfulness to God.

I now believe that having a true heart of thankfulness to God

is in many respects the highest expression of maturity we can ever possess,

and as such it is also the most difficult to achieve.

And what I want to do this morning

is simply to talk a little bit about why this is so hard for us

and offer some suggestions about things that may help us move in that direction.

And first I have two passages from Paul’s writings that I want to point out

because they’ll help us better appreciate why this is such a big deal.

The first is from the book of Romans.

If you were with us a few years ago when we were studying this remarkable book

you may remember that Paul wrote the book to answer

the four most crucial questions facing the 1^st century world

concerning this new Christian message he and others were proclaiming.

The first is, “Why was Christ needed?”

Why was it essential for God to clothe Himself in a human body and do what He did on this earth?

Paul answers that in the first two and a half chapters of his letter,

and he does it by showing us a picture of the human race without Christ.

The second question he answers is, “What is a Christian?”, or perhaps more accurately,

“What does it mean to live with God on the basis of faith in Christ?”

From 2:21 through the end of chapter 8 he explains that to us.

The third question he answers is, “How about the Jews now that God has established His Church here on the this earth?”, a question he then answers in chapters 9, 10, and 11.

And then he uses the final five chapters to answer the forth question, “What are the basic principles that govern life in the church?”

I mention this because there is a statement in the first section of the book,

the section in which Paul explains why it was necessary for Christ to do what He did,

that we can only truly appreciate when we understand where it appears

and what Paul is doing with it.

As I mentioned, in that first section of the book

Paul explains why Christ was needed

by painting for us a terrifying picture of what the human race looks like without Christ.

And if you ever want to get depressed,

if you ever want to be intellectually pushed to the place where there seems to be no hope,

just read Romans 1:18 through 2:20.

The passage begins with the words, ROM 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness...

and it just gets worse from there

because he then goes on to show why every human being alive

justifiably deserves that wrath.

And in the opening part of this dismal account

Paul traces the progressive disintegration of the human race,

explaining the disastrous choices we made,

the choices that qualified us for the wrath of God being poured out on us.

There’s just three steps in the process.

First, in Romans 1:20 Paul tells us that the reality and goodness of God

has been clearly revealed to the entire human race

through the physical creation.

To see both the magnitude and the majesty of this physical world

is to have the existence of a Creator God screamed at us beyond any purely logical ability to deny.

That’s the first step in the process.

But it’s the second step in the process that I wanted to point out to us this morning.

Paul gives it to us in Romans 1:21-23 where he says,

For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

Because we did not want to submit to Him,

we turned our backs on the obvious truth of His existence

and chose to worship the world in which we live rather than the God who made it.

And then, just to complete the picture,

the third step in the process is found in the next verse where Paul says,

ROM 1:24 Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.

In other words,

God simply allowed the human race to reap the natural consequences of our rejection of Him.

And from there Paul continues on to paint for us

a picture of the human race without God.

But the reason I brought us to this passage in the first place

is because of that first phrase in verse 21

where Paul explains the two things God wanted from His creation,

the two things He had every right to expect,

the two things we refused to give.

For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks...

...honor Him as God ...and thank Him...

Whenever we see God as He truly is

we will give those two responses -

we will honor Him as God and give thanks.

Give thanks for what?

For everything.

For who He is - the kind of God He is,

and for all that He’s done in us and for us...in spite of us.

And if you think that’s an easy thing for us,

I think you have not yet understood what I’m trying to say here.

This has nothing to do with our telling the family

how thankful we are for the turkey and dressing.

The truth is that, for all of us,

seeing God with that clarity is a relatively rare occurrence in our lives.

OK, maybe I’d better just make it personal.

For me it is a relatively rare occurrence,

like gaining a fleeting glimpse of something beautiful,

something remarkable

as I drive by it in the car.

I think I shared with you in the past

an incident that took place in my life nearly two years ago now.

I have a very poor sense of dates and times - everything just sort of flows together,

but this I remember

because it happened in the Spring of 2006

when Sandee was spending a few days with Matt and Joni and Matty.

During such trips

I usually use my time in the evenings

to get into some messy house project

that’s better done when I’m home alone.

This time I decided to strip wallpaper off of the bathroom walls,

wall paper that we’d put up on unpainted walls 20 years ago.

I was in there, gouging away at this stuff that wouldn’t come off

and I started thinking

about some of the things that had been happening in my life recently.

And all of the sudden I saw my God’s work in my life as I’d never seen it before.

I saw things He’d been doing for 10...20...30 years,

things I’d been completely unaware of.

I saw not just what He’d done for me - not just the external things,

but what He’d been doing in me, bit by bit for more years than many of you have been alive.

I saw His gentleness,

and His kindness,

and His incredible compassion,

and His determination to bring me into a level of fulfillment in life

that I could never have even imagined.

I remember just sitting down on the edge of the tub,

with bits of sticky wallpaper all over the floor,

saying over and over and over again,

“I know what You’ve done...I know what You’ve done...I know what You’ve done!”

And at that instant I truly did.

I saw my God’s heart for me,

and the flood of gratitude and thankfulness that poured out of me

was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before.

And for me

it was a tiny glimpse of how the human spirit responds

when we see our Creator as He truly is.

It didn’t last, of course.

Within twenty-four hours I was once again

back to my anxious, fearful, doubting default setting in life.

But having once seen it,

having once seen HIM a little bit,

it has been easier to see Him again,

and there have been a number of times since then

when that same flood of gratitude has poured out of me.

And I mention this passage in Romans this morning

because I want us to see that the place at which the human race

made its turn away from the truth,

away from our Creator

was the point at which we refused to give thanks to God.

And having said that,

it will come as no surprise that

our reentrance into Him

is marked by our reversing that tragic error.

Which brings me to the second passage I want us see,

a statement made by the author of Hebrews in Hebrews 11:6.

It is a statement in which the author defines faith for us,

the kind of faith that reunites us with our Creator.

And in that verse he says,

HEB 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.

In this statement the author reveals to us

the exact nature of true faith in God.

It has nothing to do with anything

that even remotely looks like a “leap of faith”.

It isn’t a blind plunge into the unknown

with the hope that there is Someone there to catch us.

Faith is not a little boy sitting on the eave of the house,

flinging himself off,

hoping he won’t hurt himself when he lands.

Faith is a little boy sitting on the eave of the house,

and below him stands his daddy,

the daddy who loves him as only a daddy could,

the daddy who would, without a second thought, die for his son if necessary.

And faith is that little boy

looking into his daddy’s eyes,

and hearing his daddy say, “Jump son! I will catch you, and I will never ever let you fall.”

Faith is our choosing to believe first of all that our God is there,

but even more that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.

It is our choosing to believe that He is good,

absolutely good in everything He does...always.

Faith is our spirit saying “thank you” to God,

“thank you...thank you...thank you”.

And still it doesn’t sound all that hard,

and it won’t until I share with you what the absence of faith looks like,

until I share with you

the evidences in our lives

of those times when we are refusing to thank God.

Because you see, the opposite of refusing to thank God isn’t simply silence.

It isn’t doubt,

it isn’t fear of Him,

it isn’t even rebellion against Him.

I think the opposite of thanking God

is anger -

our anger against Him

for what we believe to be His injustice against us

or His failure to do for us or for someone we love

what we feel He should have done.

And I know that as soon as I say that

I run the risk of losing your interest

because right now most of you

are very likely not consciously aware

of any personal anger against God.

And yet,

not only do I think that anger is present in some of your lives,

but I have come to believe

that anger against God

is the place at which we all begin our interaction with Him.

It is, in fact, the human default setting

in our attitude toward our Creator.

It is, the natural response of human flesh

to an all-powerful Creator God.

The reason we rarely have any conscious awareness of our anger

is because we have an instinctive awareness

of how illogical it is

for a created being to pass judgment on the actions of the Creator,

and so we disguise our anger against Him

by redirecting it

to what we believe to be more reasonable targets.

We’ll be angry at our circumstances.

We’ll be angry at our parents.

We’ll be angry at our spouse or our children.

We’ll be angry at our boss,

or at the government,

or at the weather,

or at our living situation.

We’ll be angry at our lack of money to do the things we want to do,

or at our health,

or at those in authority over us who will not give us the freedom we believe we deserve.

We’ll be angry at the jerk in front of us who’s driving too slow,

or at the jerk behind us who’s driving too fast.

But with every anger response we ever feel,

underlying that response

there is a deeper anger response within our spirits against God.

And outside of the redemptive work of the Spirit of God within us

it seems like an absolutely reasonable, justified anger.

You see, given the obvious existence of a Creator God,

(and when we enter this world it is obvious to us,

though we frequently work hard to find some way around this obvious truth

as we move into our adult years,)

and given the obvious truth

that such a God can do anything He chooses to do,

whenever we encounter anything in our world

that does not meet with our approval,

at the spirit level

we just naturally trace our resentment, our anger for what offends us

back to the One who could have changed it,

or prevented it from ever happening.

Our anger against God

begins long before we have any conscious awareness of it.

It is certainly fully developed

from our earliest school days.

We learn very early in life

that, even though it says right there in our Declaration of Independence

that all men are created equal,

it’s simply not true.

We learn even before we can speak

how the people around us respond to us,

and how they respond to others.

By the time we start school

it is obvious to us

that there are some children who seem to have nicer bodies than ours,

and some who always seem to know the answers the teacher wants long before we do,

and some who are stronger, or faster, or funnier, or richer than us.

I can remember in my early grade school years

sitting in the lunch room at North City Elementary School

and watching one of my friends take a whole package of Hostess cup cakes out of his lunch bag.

Not just one cup cake,

but a whole, unopened package of two.

I have a brother a year older than myself

and maybe once or twice a year

we would each find one such cup cake in our lunches.

But never ever two.

I knew right then that all boys are not created equal.

There are some who come from incredible wealth,

some who regularly find whole packages of Hostess cup cakes in their lunch.

But my point here is simply that

our anger against our Creator

finds it’s roots in our earliest discoveries about ourselves,

and about our world,

and about the way things operate in this world

because in our spirits

we trace every perceived flaw within ourselves

and every injustice in our world

back to the One who made us the way we are,

back to the One who could have made us taller,

or shorter,

or smarter,

or funnier,

or prettier,

or stronger,

or more co-ordinated,

and back to the One

who could have intervened in our lives

at those points where evil or injustice touched us

and yet He did nothing.

And prior to our encounter with Jesus Christ

our list of grievances against God

just continues to grow and grow and grow.

We see every wound that comes into our lives,

every real or perceived act of unkindness,

or outright sin against us,

everything that causes us pain,

or anxiety,

or feelings of inadequacy,

we see all of them as things this almighty God could have prevented,

and things that, to our minds, give us a reasonable, justifiable basis

for anger against Him.

And how do we turn it around?

How do we begin battling these anger responses against our Creator?

Well, I know that some of what needs to be done

can only be done by our God

as He reveals to us the truth about Himself.

There are some places in our lives

where He alone can bring us to the place where we can say, “I know what You’ve done...”.

But there is something we can do as well,

something that is clearly outlined again and again in Scripture.

PSA 97:12 Be glad in the Lord, you righteous ones, And give thanks...

COL 2:7 having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude.

But here’s the thing -

we only begin to make progress in defeating our anger against Him

when we thank Him, not just for the things we like,

but for the things we don’t like as well.

Only then do we begin to truly express

our trust in His absolute goodness.

Maybe I could say it better in the form of a prayer.

“Thank you, Lord, for the way You have handled my life.

Thank you for Your promise that You will take all things that enter my life

and recreate them into good as I place them into your hands.

Thank you for giving me the grace and the strength

to handle even the evil in my life.

Thank you for giving me both the courage and the strength

to forgive those who have done evil against me.

Thank you for being absolutely good to me

even when I cannot see it,

and cannot understand what You’re doing or why.

Thank you for holding me always in your arms,

and thank you that no one and nothing can ever separate me from your love.” Amen.