Message 12 - 1 Thessalonians Chapter 5:18 – Giving Thanks In Everything; Rejoicing With Thanksgiving Series

MESSAGE 12 - 1 THESSALONIANS CHAPTER 5:18 – GIVING THANKS IN EVERYTHING; REJOICING WITH THANKSGIVING

{{1Thessalonians 5:18 “In EVERYTHING give thanks for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”}}

[A]. WHAT IS EVERYTHING?

That is challenging. “Everything” is everything. We all know that it is not hard to give thanks when we are happy, and the immediate future looks quite cheerful. It is when things are against us that thanksgiving becomes very difficult, especially when it involves personal relationships like a wife or a wayward kid, or family tragedy, or some disaster. We can’t give thanks but we can be critical. It started way back with Adam – {{Genesis 3:12 The man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree and I ate.”}} Yes, Lord, it was the woman YOU gave me! That was the trouble.

If you want to evaluate people’s lives, then it is easy to see Paul had one of the most difficult lives anyone has been called on to live. We know from what he wrote, that he exalted in his tribulation, thanking God that he was in God’s will. When a man is in the will of God, the happy and unhappy incidents; the joy and the cursing of man – all these are points of thanks, because the will of God is central. There was an early Christian father called Ignatius of Antioch who was sent by the Romans to be executed in the arena about 110 AD, and on the way there, he wrote 7 letters to churches, and in those, he spoke of his coming martyrdom with delight, and was thanking God, even to the extent of saying he would welcome the lions and put his head in their mouths for them to crunch him.

Quotes from Ignatius: [[“I am God's wheat, ground fine by the lions, teeth to be made purest bread for Christ.” “No early pleasures, no kingdoms of this world can benefit me in any way. I prefer death in Christ Jesus to power over the farthest limits of the earth. He who died in place of us is the one object of my quest. He who rose for our sakes is my one desire. The time for my birth is close at hand. Forgive me, my brothers. Do not stand in the way of my birth to real life; do not wish me stillborn. My desire is to belong to God. Do not, then, hand me back to the world. Do not try to tempt me with material things. Let me attain pure light. Only on my arrival there can I be fully a human being. Give me the privilege of imitating the passion of my God.”]]

[B]. Thanks in the New Testament

There are many scripture references to thanks in the New Testament, and they cover a number of circumstances. Do you know you can thank God wrongly? See here – {{Luke 18:11 “The Pharisee stood and was praying thus to himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax-gatherer.”}} You can give thanks in a general way – {{1Timothy 2:1 “First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and THANKSGIVINGS, be made on behalf of all men.”}}

Prayer is not a list of requests, but incorporates thanksgiving – {{Colossians 4:2 “Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving.”}} There is a position where prayer and supplication are helped along by thanksgiving, and this is the verse – {{Philippians 4:6 “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with THANKSGIVING let your requests be made known to God.”}}

When writing to the Ephesians, Paul uses a concerning word for some Christians, the word “always”. Here is that verse – {{Ephesians 5:20 “always giving THANKS FOR ALL THINGS in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father,”}} and he says something similar to the Colossians – {{Colossians. 3:17 “Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.”}}

The giving of thanks is actually a sacrifice as this challenging verse would teach us – {{Hebrews 13:15 “Through Him then, let us continually offer up a SACRIFICE of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name.”}} Of course, we should always be giving thanks to God for our fellow believers as Paul always did for all the saints, and this is just one of those verses – {{Colossians 3:17 “Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, GIVING THANKS through Him to God the Father.”}}